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GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 



BOOKS BY MR. STEDMAN ] 

Victorian Poets. 

Poets of America. 

The Nature and Elements of Poetry. 

A Victorian Anthology. 1837-1895. 

An American Anthology. 1787-1900. 

Poems. Household Edition. I 

I 

Life and Letters of Edmund ? 

Clarence Stedman | 

By Laura Stedman and George M. Gould, M.D. ' 

Large 8vo. Two volumes. Illustrated. $7.50 net. 




GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 



BY 



EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 




NEW YORK 

MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 

1911 






f^^% 



Copyright, 1911, by 
MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 

New York 



Published, September, 1911 









CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Genius i 

II. What Is Criticism ? 38 

III. A Belt of Asteroids 46 

IV. Keats 82 

V. Landor 91 

VI. William Blake, Poet and Painter . 102 

VII. Whittier 107 

VIII. Mr. Bryant's " Thirty Poems " . . in 

IX. Mr. Bryant's " Homer " . . . .125 

X. Stoddard's Poems 141 

XI. Mrs. Stoddard's Novels . . . .154 

XII. Mrs. Stoddard's Poems . . . -159 

XIII. Stoddard's Last Poem . . . .166 

XIV. Austin Dobson 174 

— XV. Eugene Field 183 

XVI. Edwin Booth 193 

XVII. King — " The Frolic and the Gentle " 215 

XVIII. Guy Wetmore Carryl .... 220 

XIX. Treasure Tombs at Myken^ . . . 225 

.XX. Sidney Lanier 250 

[v] 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XXI. Julia Ward Howe 254 

XXII. Emma Lazarus 264 

XXIII. Kipling's Ballads of "The Seven 

Seas" 268 

XXIV. Wendell's '' Cotton Mather " . . 274 
XXV. Juliet's Runaway, Once More . . 280 



[vi] 



EDITORIAL NOTE _ 

For courteous permission to republish these essays 
we are under obHgations to The Houghton Mifflin 
Company; The Century Company; The Critic; The 
Syndics of the Cambridge University Press, England ; 
Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons; Messrs. Henry Holt 
and Company; Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons; The 
King Memorial Committee of the Century Associa- 
tion; and Mr. Richard G. Badger. 

Laura Stedman, 
George M. Gould. 



GENIUS ^ 

A WRITER nowadays hardly makes choice of such 
a topic as this, unless with due occasion. Even 
then he leniently recalls the feeling of his schoolboy 
days, when he sat before a theme — Virtue, Industry, 
or Ambition — justly out of sorts with his task, if not 
with his teacher, and much in doubt how to begin it. 
But I am moved to touch upon the present subject, 
and in a measure guided, by the striking declaration 
of one whose original works, no less than his present 
occupancy of an official chair of criticism, make him 
a conspicuous authority. No opinion, however strik- 
ing and unexpected, can fail to receive attention when 
advanced by Mr. Howells with all his honesty and 
humor, and in a style so agreeable as to commend him 
to the favor of even those against whom his gentle 
shafts of satire are directed. 

Not long since, then, our favorite novelist gave a 
hearing to those who have supported claims, of various 
parties, to the possession of Genius. He forthwith 
nonsuited them, on the ground that there was no cause 
of action. Instead of arguing for an apportionment 
of the estate indicated by the aforesaid designation, 

^ The New Princeton Review, September, 1886. 

[I] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

we have, as if claimants to some hypothetical Town- 
ley or Hyde inheritance, to face a judicial decision, 
based upon evidence satisfactory to the Court at least, 
that such a thing does not exist and never has existed. 
He finds that there is no such " puissant and admirable 
prodigy . . . created out of the common." It is as 
much of a superstition as the Maelstrom of Malte- 
Brun; it is a mythical and fantastic device, kept up 
for the intimidation of modest and overcredulous peo- 
ple. Conformably to this decision, and in frequent 
supplementary references thereto, he places the word 
"genius" between quotation marks, very much as an 
old-time Romanist crossed himself when naming the 
Evil One or Oliver Cromwell; or as if it were an im- 
postor consigned to the pillory, or a sentenced repro- 
bate in charge of a brace of tipstaffs. Mr. Howells's 
opinion and practice are of no slight moment. It must 
be nothing short of conviction and a sense of duty 
that could move him to discredit that of which many 
would select himself as an exemplar. Something more 
than fair talents, and the aid of the industry which 
he celebrates and to which Hercules ever was an ally, 
had been required, we thought, to produce those works 
of his that give us pride. Should his judgment in time 
be reversed, — should the reality of genius be sustained, 
after all, then Literature will have reason to exclaim 
to him, as La belle Taincturiere cried to her jealous 
spouse, in Les Contes Drolatiqttes: Arrete, malheu- 
reux, tu vas titer le pere de tes enfans! 

Sincerity, however, is one of his acknowledged 
traits, and none will suspect for an instant that he 

[2] 



GENIUS 

would be a willing promulgator of sophistry. That 
his myth-theory can be, like Bishop Whateley's Napo- 
leon and Mr. Lang's Gladstone, a lively and pleasant 
bit of by-play, is equally out of the question. Assum- 
ing, then, that the popular belief in genius is a super- 
stition, we scarcely can do better than to look into its 
origin; to inquire whether, like the sun-myth, it is a 
genuine folk-lore common to all times and races, or 
something begotten in the romantic passion of the 
latter-day world. On the whole, I think its adherents 
may claim for it a respectable antiquity. There are 
reasons for belief that the Asiatics, with their notions 
of divination, inspiration, and incarnation, were the 
progenitors of this tradition, as of so many other fads 
and fables. But it will suffice to go back to Athens, the 
distributing reservoir out of which flowed our own 
stream of-lhought. From the prince of Grecian ideal- 
ists we inherit teachings that in the end brought about 
the use and meaning of our word Genius. With his 
master, Socrates, he conceived distinctive greatness to 
be the result of superhuman guidance. To these 
heathen in their blindness the special power of cer- 
tain men seemed inexplicable otherwise than as a gift, 
bestowed by the daimon. Plato gossips concerning 
the etymology of this word, saying that Hesiod uses 
the title " demons " to denote the " golden race of 
men who came first," and who, now that fate has 
closed over the race, are " holy daimones upon the 
earth, — beneficent, averters of ill, guardians of mortal 
men." In the primitive dialect the word means those 
who are knowing or wise, and the philosopher avers 

[3] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

that the wise man who happens to be a good man is 
daimonion — i.e., more than human. The deduction 
finally resulting in our modern illusion was made by 
Plato himself, and in various lofty passages. "The 
gift," he says in Ion, " which you possess of speaking 
excellently about Homer, is not an art, but an inspira- 
tion : there is a divinity moving in you." Again, the 
poet is " a holy thing, and there is no invention in 
him until he has been inspired . . . For not by art 
does the poet sing, but by power divine." Professor 
Jowett's comment inferentially describes genius as 
something " unconscious, or spontaneous, or a gift of 
nature." Plainly, the Academe and its master should 
have a condign share of any criticism to which the 
early promoters of this fallacy may be subjected. For 
the case of the Jukes affords no plainer evidence of 
the spread of wrongful tendencies by multiplication in 
descent. 

We should have to range through many literatures 
to show how this illusion of the Platonists and Neo- 
Platonists commended itself to the entire race of phi- 
losophers, poets, artists, and warriors, whose vanity 
is fed by the conceit that they are a sort of chosen 
people. Plutarch made it the final test of his heroes, 
and the circle of Augustan wits gave it ready credence. 
Cicero declared that all great men were inspired, and 
his furor poeticus is of a piece with Plato's ^' divine 
frenzy " — whose outcome both deemed far more pre- 
cious than that of sober reflection. The idea survived 
the middle ages, sometimes recurring to its original 
and unsophisticated form ; but the learned and power- 

[4] 



GENIUS 

ful, who had outgrown the pious faith of their an- 
cestors, thought Tasso mad (as indeed he may have 
been) when he claimed that he was indebted to com- 
munication with a familiar spirit for his noblest lyrical 
discourse, and for that heroic melancholy which, it 
was said, ^' raised and brightened his spirit, so far it 
was from depressing or rendering it obscure." Lord 
Bacon, certainly a judge of evidence, and one who sub- 
jected most things to scientific test, threw the great 
weight of his authority in favor of the belief that 
poets and other originators produce by a kind of ex- 
ceptional gift, if not through direct inspiration. To 
be sure, he lived in a superstitious time, and put faith, 
despite his wisdom, in certain mysteries of the quacks 
and alchemists, in barbarous therapeutic concoctions, 
and was not wholly incredulous of witchcraft and as- 
trology. He charges a man to set hours for his routine 
labors, but " whatsoever is agreeable to his nature, let 
him take no care for any set times; for his thoughts 
w411 fly to it of themselves." He conceived that a 
painter to '' make a better face than ever was . . . 
must do it by a kind of felicity (as a musician that 
maketh an excellent air in music) and not by rule." 
Sidney had described poesy as that which '' lifts the 
mind from the dungeon of the body to the enjoying 
its own divine essence;" and on like ground Bacon 
thought it partook of divineness, " because it doth raise 
and erect the mind, by submitting the shews of things 
to the desires of the mind ; whereas reason doth buckle 
and bow the mind unto the nature of things." 

Dry den was one of the earliest English writers to 

[5] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

use the very word genius in the sense of that which 
is " the gift of Nature " and which " must be born, 
and never can be taught." Its most frequent use by 
the Latins was in the sense of a tutelar spirit, but 
sometimes, as in Juvenal and Martial, it denoted the 
fire of individual greatness. The idea of a divine ad- 
monisher was more or less current with the Latins as 
with the Greeks. They named this spirit the " inborn," 
and Genius thus came to mean the inspiration rather 
than the inspirer, agreeably to the feeling that the soul 
is itself divine and its own monitor. In modern times 
the word, very slightly inflected, has been more widely 
received into European languages, to express a mean- 
ing common to all, than almost any other Latin deriva- 
tive ; it is not only found in all Latin tongues, — Italian, 
Spanish, Portuguese, French, — but has been adopted 
by the Germans, Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, and 
other peoples who, like ourselves, have no indigenous 
word that conveys precisely the same idea. A uni- 
versal word means a universal thought. Prophets, 
mystics, all direct-inspirationists, still cherish the ger- 
minal belief, so rapturously manifest in Jacob Bohme's 
avowal : " I say before God that I do not myself know 
how it happens to me that, without having the im- 
pelling will, I do not know what I should write. For 
when I write the Spirit dictates to me." But genius, 
in the derivative sense, is equally recognized, the world 
over, as a gift, something not quite attainable by labor, 
however promotive that may be of its bravest exercise, 
and a gift of types as various as are the different per- 
sons endowed with it. 

[6] 



GENIUS 

That this view, however specious, has been captivat- 
ing to the Teutonic mind, appears not alone from the 
language of German poets and artists, with their tradi- 
tional pretensions to the gift, but even more from that 
of philosophers and critics, having the true father of 
German criticism at their head. Lessing, the most 
revolutionary and constructive of critics, the inspirer 
of creative intellect, reverenced by the youthful Goethe, 
the guide of Schiller, and accepted by the distrustful 
Heine within our own time as the paragon of all lit- 
erary history, even the noble Lessing corporated this 
vagary into his system, and defends it with fine irony 
in the Dramaturgie: 



"To the man of Genius {Genie) it is granted not to 
know a thousand things which every schoolboy knows. 
. . . He goes wrong, therefore, now from confidence, 
now from pride, sometimes intentionally, sometimes un- 
intentionally, — so often, so grossly, that we cannot express 
our wonder enough to other good people. We stand in 
amazement, clap our hands, and exclaim : ' But how could 
so great a man be so ignorant ? How is it possible it did 
not occur to him ? Did he not reflect, then ? ' Oh ! let 
us be silent; we think we humiliate him, and only make 
ourselves ridiculous in his eyes. Everything we know 
better than he only proves that we went more diligently 
to school than he; but, unfortunately, that was necessary 
if we were not to continue perfect blockheads." 



He audaciously removes the world of a genius {die 
Welt eines Genie s) from the commonplace world at 
the service of every man. Its events, 

[7] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

" Although they are not of this world, might neverthe- 
less belong to another world — ... in short, to the 
world of a genius who (let it be allowed to me to indicate 
the Creator without name by his noblest creature!), imi- 
tating on a small scale the highest Genius (hochste 
Genie), places, exchanges, diminishes, enlarges the parts 
of the present world in order to make from it a whole 
of his own with which he connects his own aims." 

Elsewhere, while insisting upon the independence 
of the gift-possessor, he cautions us against the blunder 
of mistaking pleasure and facility for genius. Lessing, 
be it observed, classed himself as outside the sacred 
circle ; although his poems and dramas had some vogue, 
he thought them the outcome of taste and industry, 
but acknowledged that to criticism he *' owed some- 
thing which comes very near genius." " Otherwise," 
he wrote, " I do not feel in me the living fountain 
which works upward by its own force, shoots up by 
its own force in such rich, fresh, and pure streams. 
I must force everything out of me by the fly-press 
and pipes." Yet his biographer says that his insight 
as a critic was to a large extent " due to the study 
of his own intellectual processes as a poet." Goethe, 
a savant and usually possessed of the clearest sense, 
shared in Lessing's aberration and resisted even the 
conventional language that tends to rectify it. He 
would not have it said that Mozart had composed Don 
Juan, but thus assured Eckermann : 

" It is a spiritual creation, in which the details, as well 
as the whole, are pervaded by one spirit, and by the truth 

[8] 



GENIUS 

of one life ; so that the producer did not make experi- 
ments, and patch together, and follow his own caprice, 
but was altogether in the power of the daemonic spirit of 
his genius, and acted according to its orders." 

The great writers, mystics and iconoclasts alike, 
upon whose works our present generation fed in youth, 
have been subject to this hallucination. There is 
scarcely an exception in the group of English worthies 
just prior to our own period of the colored photo- 
graph, cast-iron architecture, law as a business, and 
of book-making as a staple, time-regulated, and surely 
productive trade. All strike the key of De Quincey's 
rhapsody on Shakespeare : *' O mighty poet ! Thy 
works are not as those of other men, simply and 
merely great w^orks of art; but are also like the phe- 
nomena of nature, like the sun and the sea, the stars 
and the flowers." It is true that Carlyle, wath his 
varying treatment of prerogative, once or twice made 
outbursts that have encouraged others to rise, like the 
poor wise man in the legend, and say : " I doubt ! " 
As we read Mr. Howells's protest, it perforce calls 
to mind the highest authority citable in its support. 
Yes, Carlyle wrote that genius " means transcendent 
capacity of taking trouble, first of all." And he apos- 
trophizes one of his heroes, enduring the discipline of 
youth : 

" Daily return the quiet dull duties. . . . Patience, 
young man of genius, as the Newspapers would now call 
you ; it is indispensably beneficial nevertheless ! To swal- 
low one's disgusts, and do faithfully the ugly commanded 

[9] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

work, taking no counsel with flesh and blood : know that 
' genius/ everywhere in Nature, means this first of all." 



But Carlyle here reverts to the dogged apprentice- 
ship of " slow, stubborn, broad-shouldered " Friedrich 
Wilhelm, and elsewhere he finds something else more 
needful than patience first of all: everywhere, one 
might say, since of latter-day Englishmen, this chief 
exorciser and cloud-dispeller seems from youth to age 
to have welcomed most unreservedly the chimera of 
genius and to account its exemplars as a select and 
consecrated race. To him they are ever the " chosen 
men of the world," in all fields of discovery, thought, 
action, creative art. In Goethe he salutes " the ex- 
istence of a high and peculiar genius." His Mirabeau 
illustrates the difference " between an original man, 
of never such questionable sort, and the most dexterous 
cunningly-devised parliamentary mill." The devia- 
tions of Richter's star only assure him that " Genius 
has privileges of its own; it selects an orbit for itself; 
and be this never so eccentric, if it is indeed a celestial 
orbit, we mere star-gazers must at last compose our- 
selves, must cease to cavil at it, and begin to observe 
its laws." 

Nevertheless, that outbreak of Carlyle's, reenforced 
by epigrams attributed to George Eliot and other con- 
temporaries, and of which Mr. Howells gives us the 
latest paraphrase, was not lost upon our working-day 
and matter-of-fact generation. It was indeed as when 
some bold explorer sailed at last between Moskenaes 
and Mosken, sounding and heaving his log, and found 

[10] 



GENIUS 

a sturdy industrious current, but no Maelstrom super- 
natural or otherwise. Or it was the jet of cold water 
thrown into the boiling, bubbling cauldron and reduc- 
ing in a jiffy its superfluous steam. The fire may 
still be underneath, and the steam-gauge yet rise high 
as ever, but safety and low pressure is the watchword 
of a popular engineer. Some of our most brilliant 
thinkers, to whom the public would not gainsay the at- 
tributes of genius, are quite disenchanted, and recog- 
nize it neither in themselves nor in others. The lack 
of self-consciousness, however, proves nothing. Car- 
lyle, appropriating Richter's phrase, said that " genius 
is ever a secret to itself," and instanced Shakespeare, 
*' who takes no airs for writing Hamlet or The Tem- 
pest, understands not that it is anything surprising.'' 
But the leader-loving masses have so long eaten of the 
insane root that at this moment, as throughout the 
centuries, they discern, or believe they discern, the ex- 
ceptionally great as plainly as they can distinguish 
Sirius and Aldebaran from the multitude of points 
that twinkle about them. 

I have refrained from looking chiefly among the 
poets for qualified judges in the present hearing, for 
we shall see that they would be objected to as inter- 
ested parties, if not peremptorily appealed from, by 
the other side. Yet it may be noted that, at about the 
time when Mr. Howells rendered his decision, an 
American poet, of high critical jurisdiction, was ac- 
cepting this traditional verity of genius as sound under 
the law. In the discourse upon Gray, with which Mr. 
Lowell favored the readers of the New Princeton, he 

[II] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

said in his unrivalled way that Addison and Steele " to- 
gether made a man of genius," and drew a fine dis- 
tinction when he showed that only the vivid genius 
of Pope could so nearly persuade wit to become poetry. 
In speaking of the rare, yet occasional, union of genius 
and dilettantism in the same person, he sees that 
" genius implies always a certain fanaticism of tem- 
perament, which, if sometimes it seems fitful, is yet 
capable of intense energy on occasion." That which 
idealizes commonplace, he elsewhere looks upon as 
" a divine gift," for which to be thankful. If Lowell, 
too, be mad in this belief, he gives us a sane and 
luminous exposition of his reasons for it. But one 
might cite a cloud of other witnesses to prove how 
ancient, how continuous, how modern, is this instinc- 
tive and transmitted obliquity of the noblest minds. 
Of a truth the one universal foible of men born great 
— the most striking illustration, possibly, that could 
strengthen Disraeli's display of the Infirmities of 
Genius — is their faith in the entity, the actual exist- 
ence, of a quality by which they still are classified. 

That something does exist, something by which 
great and original things are done, Mr. Howells no 
less recognizes. Only it is not genius. There must 
be no titles in the democracies of art, invention, states- 
manship, actions, and affairs. As the Terrorists 
changed St. Matthew's Day to the Fifth Sans-culot- 
tide, so genius shall be reduced after this fashion : 

'' There is no ' genius,' there is only the mastery that 
comes to natural aptitude from the hardest study of 

[12] 



GENIUS 

any art or science." This is his dilution of, or pro- 
posed substitute for, the word he consigns to an Index 
Expurgatorius. The mooted difference between talent 
and genius should no longer distress " poor little au- 
thorlings." Genius is the Maelstrom of literary chart- 
mongers. The Norwegian Maelstrom within the mem- 
ory of middle-aged men '' existed in the belief of the 
geographers, but we now get on perfectly well with- 
out it." 

With the timidity of an old graduate who tries to 
quote Horace before those trained in the latest Roman 
pronunciation, I confess myself not wholly free from 
the superstition: the scales have not quite dropped 
from my own eyes. I have a certain respect for in- 
herited, confirmed proverbs, phrases, and terms; and 
it is hard to rid one's self of the feeling that there must 
be something in an idea, a judgment, accepted by the 
many and the few and from generation to generation, 
— there must be some mission for a word which, al- 
though it be " soiled with all ignoble use," I find taken 
into service, and in a sense differing from talent, or 
mastery, or aptitude, by every English writer from 
Dryden to Messrs. Gosse and Courthope. I plead 
guilty to the charge of having employed it more than 
once in consideration of Browning and Tennyson and 
Swinburne, of Poe and Emerson, of other exceptional 
singers in our time. Indeed, I do not see how we can 
get on without it until some apter term is proffered to 
embody what seems a distinct idea. Mr. Howells's 
paraphrase may serve for a definition, if you give it a 
superlative and intense force, a moral ictus a hundred 

[13] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

times more impressive than that which it conveys to 
the unprepared reader. Natural aptitude, of a truth — 
but aptitude so unique, so compelling, as to have 
seemed supernatural to the ancients, preternatural to 
the common folk of all times, prenatal and culminative 
to the scientific observer of heredity, evolution, en- 
vironment. Having progressed from the " wit " of 
our English forefathers to this expressive '' genius," 
shall we go back to " natural aptitude " forsooth? If 
we must have a paraphrase, let us resort to the essen- 
tial and basic salt rather than to a triturated and 
hyper-reduced solution. I would rather seek for it, 
at the other extreme, in some extravagant gloria of 
Carlyle's Past and Present: 

" Genius, Poet, do we know what these words mean ? 
An inspired Soul once more vouchsafed to us, direct from 
Nature's own fire-heat, to see the Truth, and speak it 
and do it." 

" Genius is the ' inspired gift of God.' It is the clearer 
presence of God Most High in a man. Dim, potential, 
in all men, in this man it has become actual. So says 
John Milton, who ought to be a judge; so answer him 
the Voices of all Ages and all Worlds." 

I would not dispute about words, and am quite 
aware that Carlyle's other view may constitute a 
ground for appeal to Philip sober. And I am equally 
aware how far his " infinite capacity for taking 
trouble " has echoed and extended, — until it has be- 
come almost a cult with men less authoritative than 
its latest transmitter, and given what infinite comfort 

[14] 



GENIUS 

to steady plodders, men of system, industry, and — for 
once let us say — talent, to whom after all the world is 
diurnally indebted ! 

Yet even the avowed promoters of this reform at 
times betray an unconscious or subjective distrust of 
it. I once heard a master of the art preservative of 
arts, as he scouted the popular notion of genius. With 
good mental and bodily powers, he said, it needs no 
special gift, nothing but industry and a fair chance, to 
put one at the head of any art or science — to produce 
the exact results which the lazy and credulous attribute 
to distinctive faculty. The company present ques- 
tioned this, suggesting that the test be applied to spe- 
cific cases. The painter, who in childhood drew with 
ease the likenesses of his playmates, and afterwards 
rose to greatness, had he not an innate gift that no 
industry and training could rival? The musician, 
seemingly born with musical ear and voice, or with 
instinctive mastery of instruments, — the inventor, the 
romancer, — was there nothing unique and exceptional 
in their capabilities ? No, our sturdy friend replied — 
he would not own that any man of general ability 
could not equally perfect his eye and hand, ear and 
voice, by thorough devotion and practice. To a man 
who so cheerfully disposed of these extreme illustra- 
tions there was really no reply. But within ten min- 
utes, conversation having changed to the subject of 
typography and book-making, he gratified us with 
some account of his own experience while advancing 
an art in which he deservedly stands at the front. We 
expressed our admiration for his achievements, and 

[15] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

for his natural taste ; whereupon he modestly said that 
he believed he had a genius for printing, that he was 
born to be a printer, — not reflecting, until the phrases 
had slipped from him, that he inadvertently refuted 
his previous argument. We assured him that he was 
right — he had a genius for printing, and had not the 
art been in existence, his life would have been as im- 
perfect as that of many a ne'er-do-well before the 
Civil War revealed that he was born to be a fighter 
and hero. Here we again reach the primal attribute 
of what the world, in its simplicity, denominates 
genius : it is inborn, not alone with respect to bodily 
dexterity and the fabric of the brain, but as apper- 
taining to the power and bent of the soul itself. Chan- 
ning went so far as to claim that Milton's command 
of harmony is not to be ascribed to his musical ear: 
" It belongs to the soul. It is a gift or exercise of 
genius, which has power to impress itself on whatever 
it touches, and finds or frames, in sounds, notions, 
and material forms, correspondences and harmonies 
with its own fervid thoughts and feelings." This does 
not conflict with a scientific diagnosis, as we shall 
presently see. Remove the investigation to the domain 
of psychology, and the law is still there; we declare 
to the most plain-spoken realist that there is nothing 
out of nature in it, although our psychology may as 
yet be too defective to formulate it. But as nothing 
can restrict the liberty of the soul, Channing recog- 
nized the freedom of genius to choose its own lan- 
guage and its own working-law. 

A debate once arose, in my hearing, upon the ques- 
[i6] 



GENIUS 

tion: Which of two virtuous men is the better, he 
whose virtue is ingrained and natural, or he who, 
born with evil traits, has educated and disciplined him- 
self to virtue? A youth spoke up for the latter as 
having the higher order of goodness. But he was 
rebuked by an elderly man, who said that the latter 
in truth might be the more praiseworthy for self-con- 
trol, but asked if it was to be supposed that man 
could excel the Creator in fashioning character? He 
added that a person made good at the outset by the 
Master Workman, and thus good by nature, is not 
liable to decline; that his goodness is a constant, self- 
dependent factor, while the goodness attained by effort 
is variable, and must be watched incessantly and main- 
tained by fresh effort, and, as in the case of Doctor 
Dodd, whose over-acquisitiveness at last got the better 
of him, is liable to give way at any moment of relaxed, 
vigilance. Thus it may be, I should think, that genius 
demands and gains an admiration not excited by mere 
aptness strengthened through '' taking trouble '* and 
" the hardest study." Like beauty, it is its own excuse 
for being. Its claim to special honor is all the more 
indisputable if Florus was sound in his maxim — Poeta 
nascitiir, non -fit. 

It would seem, furthermore, that there is genius, 
and genius. First, the puissant union of divers forces 
that has made rare " excepted souls " great in various 
directions, foremost and creative in every work to 
which they set themselves. Names of these, the world's 
few, are ever repeated — such as Caesar, Peter the 
Great, Michael Angelo, Bacon, Goethe — men of com- 

[17] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

bined powers, and among them we always class Shake- 
speare — ^poet, manager, citizen — because his writings 
reflect mankind at large and we justly call him the 
myriad-minded. If our Franklin had possessed more 
ideality, he clearly, despite the counter-assumption of 
Mr. Howells, would rank with the second order of 
this class. The more limited kind of genius, and that 
most speedily and easily recognized by the world, is 
the specific. Its possessor is born with an irrepressible 
faculty for some distinctive labor, art, or science. It 
belongs to your poets, romancers, artists, inventors, 
etc. — ^schylus, Pheidias, Dante, Cervantes, Rabelais, 
Newton, Haller, Pitt, Hannibal, Nelson; to Keats and 
Burns and Byron, Thackeray and Dickens; to Kean, 
Rachel, Bernhardt ; to the Ericssons and Edisons, even 
to the Zerah Colburns, Morphys, and other representa- 
tives of special and more or less abnormal powers. 
In one case a single point of light requires all the 
dynamic force of its displayer to sustain it; others 
reach a good average development in many ways. 
Again, the genius of each class has its subdivisions — 
this poet or painter is sublime — this other notable for 
beauty, or pathos, or delicacy. Thus the element of 
personality is to be considered; the product of special 
genius always having distinct and individual flavor. 
Nothing before or after exactly fills its place. De 
Quincey says, with regard to Milton, that " if the man 
had failed, the power would have failed. In that 
mode of power which he wielded, the function was ex- 
hausted in the man — species was identified with the 
individual — the poetry was incarnated in the poet." 

[i8] 



GENIUS 

In high potencies of this specific genius, the function 
is as clearly differentiated as that which marks the 
greyhound for speed, the bloodhound for scent, the 
bull-dog for grip and combativeness. 

Of course it is by an extreme instance that the exist- 
ence of such a thing as innate and special genius can 
be most easily, yet no less fairly, illustrated. Take 
the case of that born musician — if there ever is one — 
of whom it has been said that " the whole of music 
created since Guido d'Arezzo, who invented the mu- 
sical signs, up to the end of the last century, had only 
one aim — ^to create Mozart." From his letters, and 
from the collected anecdotes of his radiant career, a 
wealth of undisputable evidence is at hand, almost 
justifying this high-flown statement. It has a scien- 
tific countenance in certain facts — that his father was 
a musician; that Mozart was bred in the service of 
a cathedral choir; that he came just at the time when 
Gluck " had given impulse and reform to opera," and 
Handel and Bach had advanced music to the stage 
required for the fit exercise of his transcendent gift. 
But the gift itself ! So transcendent, so inborn, that 
the child must have seemed a changeling, first cradled 
in the shell of Apollo's lyre. We are told that when 
Wolfgang was three years old he searched out thirds 
on the piano; when four, he began playing, — at five, 
composing, — at six, he was a celebrity. His Opus L, 
four sonatas for piano and violin, was produced when 
he w^as seven. A biographer, describing his fourth 
year, says that his faculty was intuitive, " for in 
learning to play he learned to compose at the same 

[19] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

time, his own nature discovering to him some impor- 
tant secrets in melody, rhythm, and the art of setting 
a bass." When he heard discordant sounds, he turned 
pale and fell into convulsions, — like some modern real- 
ist chancing to overhear such words as romance, 
genius, poet. He was deemed a phenomenon ; his apti- 
tude was creative, his youthful mastery not the result 
of much practice. A man at the piano, organ, violin, 
harpsichord, he was a frolicsome child the moment his 
passion left him. The awakening of his heart, when he 
became a lover, intensified his musical work. Other- 
wise he remained, in certain respects, always a child; 
his gift did not imply greatness in many directions, it 
was his chief mode of expression — he used it because 
he must, even though it kept him in penury. In music 
he progressed steadily through life, despite his pre- 
cocity, and to such effect that his compeers, lamenting 
his early death, also felt relieved, for while Mozart 
lived, well might Hasse exclaim: Questo ragazzo ci 
fare dimqnticar tiitti! Here, then, was one personage 
equipped, apparently at birth, with the aural, manual, 
emotional, and creative genius for the expression of 
a human soul in music. 

The case of Mozart leads to the final path of our 
inquiry, perhaps the only one that will be acknowl- 
edged as worth attention in this analytic and scrutiniz- 
ing age. Thus far, referring to the dogmatic claims 
of idealists since Plato's time, we have been forced 
to bear in mind that this inherited conception of genius 
may be a prolonged illusion. But now the most pene- 
trative of modern thinkers have subjected it to the test 

[20] 



GENIUS 

of a stern and ruthless philosophy, to the crucial proc- 
esses of German ratiocination, — and with what result ? 
They not only admit, but insist upon, its verity; they 
define it, and declare the method of its working. They 
enable us to maintain, with some show of courage, that 
the intuitionists, if not the inspirationists, are right, 
and that Mr. Howells is wrong. Without the slightest 
reserve they pronounce genius to be the activity and 
effliix of the Intellect freed from the domination of 
the Conscious Will. 

No writers, in truth, have more dispassionately con- 
sidered the natures of talent and genius than the 
pessimist Schopenhauer, and his great living successor, 
Eduard von Hartmann. In their philosophies, creative 
faculty and taste are discussed with a beautiful pre- 
cision rarely displayed by the professed masters of 
aesthetics. Schopenhauer found talent to lie in the 
greater skill and acuteness of the discursive than of 
the intuitive cognition; while genius exhibits a devel- 
opment of the intuitive faculty greater than is needed 
for the service of the Will. 

** What is called the stirrings of genius, the hour of 
consecration, the moment of inspiration, is nothing but 
the liberation of the intellect, when the latter, for the 
time exempt from service to the will ... is active all 
alone, of its own accord. . . . Then the intellect is of 
the greatest purity, and becomes the true mirror of the 
zvorld, ... In such moments, as it were, the soul of im- 
mortal works is begotten." 

Here we see why genius is a riddle to itself, confer- 
ring benefits unconsciously, even involuntarily. Rus- 

[21] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

kin declares " there are no laws by which we can write 
Iliads." Carlyle finds manufacture " intelligible but 
trivial; creation is great, and cannot be understood." 
He, too, says that " the Voluntary and Conscious bear 
a small proportion in all the departments of Life, to 
the Involuntary and Unconscious." But Hartmann 
has made the final and definitive exposition of this 
theorem. He perceives that " ordinary talent produces 
artificially by means of rational selection and combina- 
tion, guided by its sesthetic judgment, ... It may 
accomplish something excellent, but can never attain 
to anything great . . . nor produce an original 
work. . . . Everything is still done with conscious 
choice; there is wanting the divine frenzy, the vivify- 
ing breath of the Unconscious. . . . Conscious com- 
bination may, in course of time, be acquired by effort 
of the conscious will, by industry, endurance, and prac- 
tice. The creations of genius are unwilled, passive 
conception; it does not come with the word, but quite 
unexpectedly, as if fallen from heaven, on journeys, 
in the theatre, in conversation, everywhere when it 
is least expected, always suddenly and instantane- 
ously." ^ He then goes on to show how the conscious 
combination (of talent) works out laboriously the 
smallest details, while the conception of genius re- 
ceives the whole from one mould, as the gift of the 
gods, unearned by toil; that all this is confirmed by 
all true geniuses who have given us their self-observa- 

^ Philosophy of the Unconscious. See the chapter on " The 
Unconscious in the Esthetic Judgment and in Artistic Produc- 
tion." English ed. Vol. I, pp. 269-292. 

[22] 



GENIUS 

tions, and that every one who ever has had a truly 
original thought can find it preserved in his own experi- 
ence. In illustration of these truths, Hartmann also 
instances Mozart, quoting a most apt passage from a 
letter in Jahn's biography of the musician : 

" What, you ask, is my method? ... I do not myself 
know and can never find out. When I am in particularly 
good condition, perhaps riding in a carriage, or in a walk 
after a good meal, or in a sleepless night, then the 
thoughts come to me in a rush, and best of all. Whence 
and hozu — that I do not know and cannot learn, . . . All 
the finding and making only goes on in me as in a very 
vivid dream. . . . What now has thus come into being in 
this way, that I do not easily forget again, and it is per- 
haps the best gift which the Lord God has given me." 

The last clause is a very profound observation, and 
one which only a true genius would make. All of us, 
in certain neurotic crises, hear music or see pictures 
or receive other striking and mysterious impressions. 
But the born musician, painter, idealist — these alone 
have the gift of vividly remembering such impressions 
and the power to convey them, each in his own way, 
to the approving world. As a literary counterpart to 
the experience of Mozart, I will refer to the testimony 
of Dickens, who certainly had genius, if there be such 
a gift. He was a seer of visions. " Amid silence and 
darkness ... he heard voices and saw objects; of 
which the revived impressions to him had the vividness 
of sensations, and the images his mind created in ex- 
planation of them had the coercive force of realities." 
Lewes avers that Dickens once declared to him " that 

[23] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

every word said by his characters was distinctly heard 
by him," and this the philosopher explains by a theory 
of hallucination. But Dickens himself, while suffer- 
ing illness and sorrow in the darkest hour of his life, 
wrote to Forster : 

" May I not be forgiven for thinking it a wonderful 
testimony to my being made for my art, that when, in 
the midst of this trouble and pain, I sit down to my 
book, some beneficent power shows it all to me, and 
tempts me to be interested, and / don't invent it — really 
do not — hut see it, and write it down. . . . It's only when 
all fades away and is gone, that I begin to suspect that 
its momentary relief has cost me something." 

Special examples of this kind must have brought 
Schopenhauer to avow that " Genius is a man who 
knows without learning, and teaches the world what he 
never learned." Lavater, observing its distinctive in- 
dividuality, said : " Who can produce what none else 
can, has genius," and that its proportion to the vulgar 
is "like one to a million." I may summarize all these 
reflections by the statement that genius lies in the doing 
of one thing, or many things, through power resulting 
from the unconscious action of the free intellect, in a 
manner unattainable by the conscious effort of ordi- 
nary men. 

So much for the stress of natural aptitude required 
to sustain these claims. That this inherent power can 
display its full capabilities only through industry, only 
by " taking trouble," the world, quite as well as Mr. 
Howells, has long been aware. We demand that the 
Will shall perfect its work, and know that the gift 

[24] 



GENIUS 

is checked, wasted, or quite thrown away, for want of 
such an ally. And since the will is conscious or un- 
conscious, so also may be its active force as displayed 
in study, industry, and production. In youth the will 
to grow and gain through work is often unconscious, 
but after culture and experience it applies itself to the 
extreme utilization of the intuitional. Then the for- 
tunate soul reflects on its own possession, and knows 
why its creations are good. Then it exclaims with 
Mozart — " People err if they think my art has cost 
me no trouble; I assure you, my dear friend, no one 
has taken such pains with the study of composition as 
I." And thus the critic justly says of Mozart that 
effects now hackneyed were, in his works, " the joint 
production of lofty genius and profound contrapuntal 
knowledge." Yes, genius will work; it is impelled 
" to scorn delights and live laborious days." It " can- 
not else." The fire must out or it will consume its 
inheritor. Mr. Churchill, in Kavanagh, just misses 
being a genius, because he is not driven to perform his 
work either at a heat or by rational stages. The story 
of unconscious self-training ever repeats itself; the 
childhood of Burns and Keats and Mrs. Browning, of 
James Watt, has a method of finding the precise nur- 
ture suited to it. Of course a poor soil, the absence 
of sunlight, will starve the plant or warp it to some 
morbid form. But how gloriously it thrives in its true 
habitat and at its proper season. Time and the man 
have fitted each other so happily that many ask — as 
Mr. Howells asks concerning Grant, Bismarck, Colum- 
bus, Darwin, Lincoln — who calls such an one a 

[25] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

genius? Often, too, as in the cases of at least two of 
these men, the coincidents are so marked that the actors 
lose the sense of their own destiny, and imagine them- 
selves chiefly suited to something quite otherwise from 
the work to which the very stars of heaven have im- 
pelled them. But fair aptitude, with ceaseless industry 
and aspiratioin, never can impose itself for genius upon 
the world. It will produce Southeys in a romantic 
period and TroUopes in a realistic one. We see the 
genius of Poe broken by lack of will, and that of 
Emily Bronte clouded by a fatal bodily disease; but, 
as against Wuthering Heights with its passionate in- 
completeness, Trollope's entire product stands for 
nothing more than an extensive illustration of me- 
chanical work against that which reeks with individ- 
uality, and when set against the work of true genius 
reenforced by purpose, physical strength, and oppor- 
tunity, as exhibited by Thackeray or Hugo or Dickens, 
comparison is simply out of thought. Not every mind 
catches fire with its own friction and emits flashes that 
surprise itself, as in dreams one is startled at things 
said to him, though he actually is both interlocutor and 
answerer. Thus Swift, reading his Tale of a Tub, 
exclaims " Good God ! what a genius I had when I 
wrote that book!" Thackeray confessed his delight 
with the passage where Mrs. Crawley, for a moment, 
adores her stupid husband after his one heroic act. 
" There," cried the novelist, '' is a stroke of genius ! " 
It was one of the occasions when, like our Autocrat 
composing " The Chambered Nautilus," he had written 
'' better than he could." 

[26] 



GENIUS 

If genius has its fountain in the soul, its impulse 
must be toward Ideality. It seeks that ideal which is 
the truest truth, the absolute realism. The poet and 
novelist do not withdraw themselves from constant 
study of the world, — that is for the abstract philos- 
opher, as in Phaedo: 

" I thought as I had failed in the contemplation of 
true existence, I ought to be careful that I did not lose 
the eye of my soul. ... I was afraid my soul might be 
blinded altogether if I looked at things with my eyes, or 
tried to apprehend them by the help of the senses. And 
I thought I had better have recourse to the world of 
mind and seek there the truth of existence." 

Yet Hartmann is sound in his belief that genius 
always beholds a different world from the apparent, 
'' though only by gazing deeper into the one lying he- 
fore him as well, because the world is represented in 
his mind more objective, consequently, purer and 
clearer." True realism, then, is the basis of creative 
idealism, and it is narrowness to exclude either from 
an artist's method, which needs the one for its ground 
and the other for its glory. Bacon writes of '' a more 
ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more 
absolute variety than can be found in the nature of 
things." He finds that to be '^ the best part of beauty 
which a picture cannot express." The picture or poem 
that expresses this most nearly is closest to the ideal, 
and conveys to us, I think, a vivid impression of the 
gift under discussion. Get down to popular instinct, 
and you will find a current belief that it is the privilege 

[27] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

of genius to see the soul of things; not merely their 
externals, but to know, to feel, the secret meaning of 
all that makes up life. Observation, experience, in- 
dustry, unaided by this highest sense, are of less worth 
than the service of Paul and Apollos without the 
heaven-given increase. 

This ideal tendency, and the intuitive vision of what 
is ever real, are revealed both in choice of field and 
in treatment, however varied these may be by time, 
situation, and the workman's personality. Real life 
includes the commonplace — it never yet was confined 
to it. Creations of the first order, though out of 
common experience, seem usual and among the veri- 
ties, and this because nature is what must be depicted, 
and not alone in its superficial, every-day guises. We 
find nothing improbable in the most fantastic or 
ethereal conceptions of Cervantes, Shakespeare, 
Spenser — ^the world of their imaginings is a real 
world. They do not conflict with the " sanity of true 
genius," of which Lamb says that, where it seems most 
to recede from humanity, it will be found the truest 
to it. " Herein," he adds, " the great and little wits 
are differenced, ... if the latter wander ever so 
little from nature or actual existence, they lose them- 
selves and their readers." 

If this should by chance be true, if all these thinkers 
have not been quite distraught, then the difference 
between a vital realism and that which we outlive and 
outgrow is not, as Mr. Howells puts it with respect 
to genius, a difference " in degree." It is the differ- 
ence between radical and superficial methods, between 

[28] 



GENIUS 

insight and outsight — between work by men who have 
the gift, and that by plodding yet complacent crafts- 
men with no intensity of " natural aptitude " and no 
" mastery " that can rank them with the masters. I 
do not think realism a modern discovery, whether 
French, English, or American; it has been manifest 
equally in romantic and common-sense periods, and 
just as true to nature in select and noble types as in 
those which are irreclaimably provincial or vulgar. 
The works of Thackeray, not excepting Henry Es- 
mond, are as realistic as those of Trollope or of the 
most uncompromising Zolaites. They are more so, 
because more elevated, and more intense in their ex- 
quisite portrayal of life's varied forms. Even to con- 
vey instruction you must stir the soul — the lesson that 
was not felt is soon forgotten. 

But to do this, two things are essential, traits w^hich 
this so-called genius ever has been observed to possess 
in a notable degree. The higher realism depends upon 
Imagination for the genesis of its ideal. It is imag- 
ination that makes study of external things, and con- 
ceives of novel and more perfect and exciting uses 
and combinations that may be made of them — without 
transcending the limits of nature. The second thing 
required is Passion — resolving, annealing, sympathetic 
— that comprehends and can excite the strongest feel- 
ing of which our lives are capable. Genius is thought 
to be creative, because it imagines clearly, and to lay 
hold upon us by the passionate intensity from w^hich 
the world gathers a responsive heat. 

It is a natural inference that writers who labor to 

[29] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

disenthrall us from the nympholepsy and illusions of 
the past, who deprecate any rehearsal of emotions 
keyed above the level every-day scale, who turn by 
choice to unheroic and matter-of-fact life, and believe 
that one theme or situation is as good as another, 
provided it be honestly elaborated — it is to be inferred, 
I say, that such writers must come to distrust the value 
of any intellectual power which tends to ideality, and 
makes choice instinctively of a stimulating treatment 
and an ideal theme. One may expect them to doubt 
even the existence of that high faculty which answers 
the heart's desire for what is imaginative, stirring — 
romantic, if you choose; which depicts forcibly because 
it feels intensely, and which moreover, as if through 
inspiration, masters its field without the painful study 
to which they devote themselves, and with the careless 
felicity of nature itself. Nor are they quite without 
justification. The photographic method has its use — 
no realism can be too faithful in the description of mat- 
ters excellent and beautiful in themselves. But with 
discourse and materials that are essentially vulgar 
or distasteful, and not even picturesque in studies, the 
result is scarcely worth attaining. There is a quali- 
tative meanness in the pantry-talk and key-hole dis- 
closures of Lovell the Widower, Thackeray's nearest 
descent to this kind of work. Why should we be led 
of malice aforethought in creative art — of which po- 
etry and the novel may be taken as types — to the 
persistent contemplation of boorish and motiveless 
weaklings, although they swarm about us, and add to 
the daily weariness of humdrum life? Even the 

[30] 



GENIUS 

knaves, proletarians, adventurers, that genius creates, 
interest us and are ideal in their way. But apply the 
detective's method to the movements and gabble of 
doughy nonentities, and a conviction soon arises in the 
public mind that an author's reliance upon the phono- 
graph and pocket-camera may be carried too long and 
too far. 

It is against the poets that our novelist-critic finally 
reveals a special and Junonian grudge. For, is it not 
that the poets, " having most of the say in this world, 
abuse it to shameless self -flattery '' ? Do they not set 
up this prerogative of '^ genius," and claim it chiefly 
as their own? Therefore our danger is not a famine, 
but a gross surfeit, of poets — all claiming to be great, 
unless the hot gridiron be ready for their broiling. 
If we are to have no more good bards, so much the 
better — there will be less ridiculous caracoling on the 
part of otherwise sensible persons, and less to blush 
and grieve for. Besides, haven't we still and always 
the great poets of the past, and haven't they given 
the world quite as much of the light and charm as is 
good for it? 

To this effect, and more of the like, Mr. Howells; 
and, in these days of cheap postage for third-class 
matter, there are men of his profession, haplessly lo- 
cated in the publishing centres, who have even more 
cause than he to cry — bother the scribblers that bloom 
in all seasons. To represent the forty thousand post- 
oflices of these reading and writing States there is an 
equal number of persons, old and young, male and 

[31] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

female, versifiers and prosers, whose genius is of that 
sort which Mr. Bronson Howard has defined as *' Tal- 
ent, in the first person singular." These are they who 
distress their cockney brother with pleas and commis- 
sions such as no proud, self-respecting striver ever 
yet stooped to make. They spare him not in his luck 
or disaster, health or sickness, leisure or overwork. 
Often the scant time which he hopes to devote to his 
own vintage is wasted, even if he does no more than 
to acknowledge their demands that he shall market, or 
at least sample, their too often insipid and watered 
grape-juice. Yet the world has always got on after 
this fashion. The laureate's reflection on nature, that 
of fifty seeds she often brings but one to bear, is an 
under-statement. She summons a thousand talesmen 
to get even a petty juror. Doubtless an artist, orator, 
novelist, or poet, with never so little of the sang azuVj 
belongs to the blood — a trying and unconscionable poor 
relation, but still not a commoner — most likely not so 
good as a commoner, but let the underlings flout at 
him, not the knights and nobles. If such considera- 
tions weigh not with the justly prosperous master of 
an Editor's Study, he nevertheless will forbear, on 
second thought, to wish out of existence this breed 
of ready subjects for his merry humor. What ade- 
quate relief to toil, what break to official monotony, 
if one cannot occasionally lay down the sword of 
argument and lance of fellowship, and throw clubs 
at the stock butts of one's profession! So thought 
the great Dean, in his discourse to prove that " The 
abolishing of Christianity " might be attended with 

[32] 



GENIUS 

inconveniences. '' The gentlemen of wit," he wrote, 
who are offended by the sight of so many " draggled- 
tail parsons," do not consider '' what an advantage 
and feHcity it is for great wits to be always provided 
with objects of scorn and contempt, in order to exer- 
cise and improve their talents, and divert their spleen 
from falling on each other or on themselves ; especially 
when all this may be done without the least imaginable 
danger to their own persons." 

Our discourager of poetic fluency, then, will do well 
to hesitate before quite putting out the class whose 
writhings under '' the question " may yield him further 
delectation. Nor are they so easily disposed of ; minor 
organizations cling to life. The bardlings may derive 
much edification from ]\Ir. Howells's little homily, but 
'tis doubtful whether threats or Scripture will compel 
them to forego. St. Anthony preached a notable ser- 
mon to the fishes ; they never had been so edified, but — 

The sermon now ended, 

Each turned and descended; 

The pikes went on stealing, 

The eels went on eeling; 
Much delighted were they, 
But preferred the old way. 

Our pastoral pipers, moreover, are not unlikely to 
challenge their denouncer's consistency. What, they 
will cry, of your growing tribe of novelists? If the 
poets, poor and otherwise, are always with us, their 
ranks seem thin, confronting those of the tale-writers 
that spring up from the teeth sown by ]\Ir. Howells 

[33] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

and his brilliant compeers. '' They say he cried out 
of sack," quoth Nym, discussing the pious end of 
doughty Sir John. We have mine hostess's word for 
it that he did not cry out upon that dearer foolishness 
to which he had also been devoted. We need not renew 
the question whether some who once took to "vers- 
ing " now take to " noveling " as the fashion of the 
time — either practice is venial beside that of coining 
uncouth and felonious words. Mr. Howells remem- 
bers a small volume of early verse, and believes that 
almost any middle-aged literary man can think of an- 
other. The present writer, for his part, recalls a cer- 
tain early novel; yet the fact that, unlike his friend's 
artistic poetry, it never merited and obtained publica- 
tion, shall not warp him from his belief that there are 
good stories yet to be told. But, good as our best 
novelists are, fresh as is the promise of those arising 
in many sections, glad as we are of America's prowess 
in her new field — is her poetry solely white-weed and 
wild-carrot ? Is the novel our only " good grass " ? 
And have the novelists, great and little, all the mod- 
esty? We are told that '' if we should have no more 
poets, we might be less glorious as a race, but we 
certainly should be more modest — or they would." 
We are asked, " If we are to have no more great 
poetry, haven't we the great poets of the past inalien- 
ably still? " Have there been, then, no great novelists 
in the past ? To speak plainly, the little bard and the 
little tale-writer seem to me very much like two of 
a kind. All makers of verse and story of old were 
classed together, and, as " literary fellows " and en- 

[34] 



GENIUS 

couragers of dreams and idleness, were banished from 
Plato's Republic. Nor do I see that one class of these 
workmen is more modest than another; the modesty 
of each is found among true artists of whom Mr. 
Howells is an enviable type, and whose best work 
seems to them still incomplete. The verse-maker has 
an innocent and traditional reverence for his " ideal," 
but a little ideality just now will do no harm. Grace 
will be given us to endure it. In fact, the two kinds 
of poietcB can be of mutual service. The poet can 
wisely borrow the novelist's lamp of truth, and put 
more reason in his rhymes, while the novelist emu- 
lates the color and passion of the poet, — so that verse 
will be something more than word-music, and the novel 
gain in feeling, movement. Life. For life is not in- 
sured by a refined adjustment of materials, even though 
they display the exact joinery and fitness of the Amer- 
ican coat which a New York lawyer, of mellow wit 
and learning, proffered as a model to his Bond Street 
tailor. '' There," said he, " can you. Shears, make 
anything like that in London ? " " Upon my word, 

Mr. M , I think we should hardly care to, if we 

could." "But why not, man? Does it not fit per- 
fectly, is it not cut and sewed perfectly, and are not 
all the lines graceful and trim? What does it want? 
in what can you excel it ? what does it lack ? " " Quite 
so," mused the tailor, without a trace of assent in his 
face; "it does seem to lack something, you know." 
" Well, what ? " "I beg your pardon, sir ; 'tis very 
neat work, — a world of pains to it, — but we might say 
it lacks— Life!" 

[35] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

But as for our prime question of the reality of 
genius, and the legitimate force of a word common 
to so many literatures, I think that, if the general 
recognition of these be indeed the effect of an illusion, 
the Power which shapes human destiny is not yet ready 
to remove the film from our eyes. Should the world's 
faith be an ignorant one, I still am so content with 
this inspiring dream left us in a day of disenchant- 
ment as to esteem it folly to be wise. It seems that 
Mr. Courthope and Mr. Gosse also " talk from time 
to time '' of this phantasmal " something." Do these 
writers, do I, asks our friendly reviewer, really believe 
in it? Can they, can I, severally lay hands upon our 
waistcoats and swear that we think there is any such 
thing? It would be taking an unfair advantage to 
interpret this seriously — to assume that he would ex- 
pect these English gentlemen and scholars perforce to 
recant, " when upon oath," a declaration made out of 
court ; and for myself, I hope to have grace to confess 
a change of opinion, and I have no fear that the omis- 
sion of an oath would greatly lessen his belief in 
my honesty of statement. But when asked, " is a 
* genius ' at all different from other men of like gifts, 
except in degree ? " I reply that this is begging the 
question. At present, I believe that the other men 
have not the '' like gift," that the difference is one 
of quality, not of quantity or " degree." The unique 
gift, the individuality of the faculty or faculties, con- 
stitutes the genius. 

Mr. Howells rightly lays stress upon the well-known 
danger, even to a candid mind, of nursing a pet theory. 

[36] 



GENIUS 

It is just as unwise for an inventive author, even in a 
mood of self-analysis, to toy with a theoretical para- 
dox, for literary methods grow by what they feed 
on. It is not for this, as I have said, that his admirers 
(and none more than the present writer) are grateful 
to him ; it is for the pleasure derived from very original 
works, the product of something more creative than 
even his indomitable labor, and conscientious study 
of the novelist's craft and properties. One is apt to 
set too little value upon the gift which is his alone — 
the faculty that makes so light to him that portion of 
his work which his fellows cannot master by praying 
or fasting. He is just as prone, moreover, to regard 
that as most essential which is hardest for himself, yet 
necessary to the perfect work, thus setting the labor, 
wherewith he procures and mixes components, above 
the one drop of an elixir solely his own, that adds the 
transmuting spirit to their mass. Our deft student 
and painter of New England life still has his fairy 
spectacles — they are not lost, but on his own forehead. 
Finally, it is a trait of genius, in its method of ex- 
pression, to discover and avail itself of the spirit of its 
time. My avowal that Mr. Howells had done this 
betrayed no savor of the charge of time-serving. It 
seemed to me, on the contrary, that consciously or un- 
consciously he had obeyed the ancient oracle, and that 
the admonition Follow thy Genius had left its impress 
upon his whole career. 



[37] 



II 

WHAT IS CRITICISM?^ 

A QUESTION put in this direct way, as if from 
-^^ a text-book, is first of all entitled to a plain and 
elementary rejoinder, if one can be devised. 

I even hope that in time some dialectician, as " ab- 
solute " as the Grave-digger in " Hamlet," will hit upon 
an exact reply to the question, What is Poetry ? This 
so many idealists have failed to answer, because they 
feel and do not analyze ; because they attempt by senti- 
ment and inadequate analogy to produce in us their 
own feeling, rather than to define what is, after all, a 
human mode of expression and therefore within man's 
power to define. Feeling is ** deeper than all thought," 
but when the poet Cranch tells us also that " thought 
is deeper than all speech," he is met by the poet Poe 
with the confession : ''I do not believe that any 
thought, properly so called, is out of the reach of 
language. I fancy, rather, that where difficulty in 
expression is experienced there is, in the intellect 
which experiences it, a want either of deliberateness 
or method." He also observes that " the thought is 
logicalized by the effort at expression." For a 
dreamer and man of feeling, whose learning was none 

^The Epoch, March ii and i8, 188^. 
[38] 



WHAT IS CRITICISM r 

too exact, Poe had a curiously scientific method. His 
perception of the logic of the beauty which he so 
adored was always vivid. And his own definition of 
poetry, though exclusive and narrow, is almost the 
only one on .record which conforms to the Euclidean 
maxim, viz., That a definition shall distinguish the 
thing defined from all things else. 

There is nothing so nebulous in the meaning of 
Criticism as to befog either its practitioners or the 
logicians. The dictionaries consider it chiefly in its 
relation to art and letters. For myself, now first at- 
tempting to define a function which nearly all modern 
writers exercise, I can offer no formula which seems 
more simple and comprehensive than the following : 

Criticism is the art and practice of declaring in 
what degree any work, character or action conforms 
to the Right. 

Conversely, and implied in this definition, the ofiice 
of criticism is to see and declare what is wrong — i. e., 
in what degree a w^ork fails to conform to the Right. 
As " the Right " fully includes certain traditional con- 
stituents — the true, the beautiful, the good — the term 
thus applies to all matters of fact, taste, virtue, all 
questions, in other words, of verity, aesthetics and 
morals. Since analysis resolves it in this wise, the 
primary qualifications of a critic are accuracy, taste 
and honesty. Assuredly the last two of these should 
be inborn, and all are heightened by exercise and 
culture. 

In the differentiation of effort we find many critics 
restricting themselves, or best adapted, to the review 

[39] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

of specific arts — often to special subdivisions of an 
art. But the consensus of the fine arts, for example, 
is such that, while each has inexorable limits, they all 
move in harmony and subject to the same enduring 
principles. The critic then, even in technical exami- 
nation of a painting, drama, novel or any other artistic 
structure, must be grounded in general laws and sen- 
sible of their application to other forms of creative 
work than the one under his immediate observation. 
Just as a specialist in the art of healing — say an 
oculist — or a physician essaying to cure the slightest 
ailment, must have a sound knowledge of therapeutics 
and anatomy. Otherwise his practice will be incon- 
sistent and hazardous. 

The ideal critic is one of universal prerogative. 
His faculty and doctrine, if trustworthy in one direc- 
tion, can hardly go far astray in the others. Even in 
aesthetics a thinker, deliberately conscious of beauty, 
will recognize its correlation with the true and the 
good. I am skeptical as to the radical inaccuracy or 
immorality of noted critics and artists who perceive 
or create what is lastingly beautiful; yet defects of 
temperament may influence very adversely their per- 
sonal conduct of life. 

The ideal spirit of criticism is pure and high. The 
declarer of Right, in its various provinces, assumes 
the office of a censor, a judge, and if he has no innate 
gift of perception, supported by acquired knowledge, 
his assumption will be characterized in the invidious 
sense of the word. He may have his special tastes 
and leanings, but private considerations have nothing 

[40] 



WHAT IS CRITICISM r 

to do with his decisions. An unfair critic is worse 
than an unrighteous or ignorant judge, for he deals 
with creative workmen, the class most sensitive of all 
to injustice and stupidity. He will be quick to declare 
what is fine in their work, and will point out errors 
with the bearing that makes for reform rather than 
discouragement. On the other hand, he will show no 
lenience to promoters of flagrant heresy and those 
whose work is " outlawed of art." Certain of the 
accused are either highly meritorious or guilty of 
crime in the first degree. But the maxim de minimis 
also is to be regarded : what is hopelessly dull or in- 
significant may be left to the gracious law of natural 
decay. 

With respect to fairness and unbiassed judgment, I 
have observed that sometimes the mere function of 
critical writing seems, for the time being, to change 
its exerciser from what he is in his personal life; 
to make him forget his own tastes, friendships, antipa- 
thies; just as in law we have even seen men of 
unsavory conduct and character, who, when on the 
bench, are wise and impartial judges. Into the 
rationale of this I need not go at present. When the 
best-intentioned person, not fitted by nature and equip- 
ment for a judicial calling, usurps it, the exact re- 
verse of this process is apt to be observed. 

Criticism itself, after the methods of its eminent 
professors, often is a constructive art — the promoter 
of higher standards and creations on the part of those 
to whom it is addressed. Each of the great critics 

[41] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

has added a step to the stairway from which it takes 
a more penetrative and enlarged view. Lessing de- 
clared the innate sovereignty of genius. Applying his 
thought to technics, he discussed the privileges of the 
respective fine arts and mapped out the border lines 
across which neither can pass without encroaching 
on the other's ground. Goethe's generalizations are 
those of a lofty intellect surveying works of the genius 
to which it was allied and conscious of the theory of 
their perfection. Taine, more definitely than others, 
has regarded environment and heredity as factors, a 
knowledge of which is wholly indispensable for the 
consideration of an author's product. Sainte-Beuve's 
method, so poetic and intuitive, looked into the spiritual 
growth of the character under notice, always intent 
upon a subject's personality and seeking in his work 
the expression of his soul. On similar lines Matthew 
Arnold probes for the realities of life, thought, action; 
an Anglo-ethical reverence underlies his judgments, 
in which a consciousness of the malady disturbing a 
school, an individual, or a nation, is usually apparent. 
I speak of criticism as an art, but there is a science 
of criticism, as of other arts, and to this fact is due 
the success of great artists, musicians, poets, architects, 
etc., in technical comment upon the rules and examples 
of their respective departments. In this age, whose 
chief note is a recognition of the " reign of law," it 
is more than ever fit that these classes should be heard 
with reference to their own lines of effort, should be 
Masters in the traditional sense of the appellation. 
The unformulated instinct of a true artist is scientific- 

[42] 



WHAT IS CRITICISM r 

ally correct. This declares to him that beauty is some- 
thing absolute and objective — if not an entity, a thing, 
it at all events lies in expressioiv — in the expression 
and charm of fitness. Only through a course of men- 
tal sophistry will he learn to accept the inverted theory 
of Veron (otherwise the most constructive of modern 
French critics), who maintains beauty's subjectivity, 
i. e., its non-existence except as an impression of the 
observer. Admit Veron's premise, that beauty is a 
chimera, and you must consider his treatise on 
''Esthetics" unimpeachable. It is logical, masterly; 
but for one I do not think it sound doctrine, and the 
artistic nature is loath to believe, that " there is no 
disputing about tastes." I do not admit that Taste — 
and I use this hackneyed word in its full meaning — is 
purely the subjective standard of each individual, and 
that the taste of one is as good as that of another. 
Beauty everywhere is '' a felt conformity to law " — of 
course to the law of its habitat; hence, again, the 
expression of the fitness of things, of the Right under 
the existing conditions. The personal '' impressions " 
of one whose organization does not enable him to 
perceive that fitness, are no more to us than the visions 
of the half-blind who " see men as trees walking." 
And if from a material world or system all sentient 
observers were to be exiled, certain forms and com- 
binations would still be beautiful in themselves, and 
would be found so by the first sane intelligence that 
should arrive to contemplate them. 

Taste, therefore, is subjective, because man himself 
is a microcosm, having the operation of universal 

[43] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

methods in his own being, and discerning what is in 
harmony therewith. So far as he discerns this, he 
has taste; so far as he can utiHze it in forming new 
and ideal structures, he is a creative artist. 

The modern effort errs, in its false assumption of 
freedom, whenever a workman is encouraged to make 
rules limited to his own capacity. A sane and noble 
" impressionism " is that which reveals to us the in- 
dividuality, the distinctive genius of an artist; it is 
his personal nimbus illuminating his work, but the 
work must express what is scientifically defensible, 
or it will be wrong and not enduring. One may wear 
blue glasses, but that does not make the world blue. 
Nevertheless, standards of fitness vary, justly, accord- 
ing to varying conditions of region, material, race, 
etc., beauty being always dependent on these condi- 
tions. An edifice like the Parthenon, whose propor- 
tions are exquisite, because exactly fitted to their spe- 
cial locality in this special world, would be absurd 
and unlovely, if not impossible, on another planet. 
A race inhabiting the latter would find beauty only in 
a structure subordinated to the conditions of weight, 
material, color, climate, there existing. Such observ- 
ers, like the structure, would be part of the distinct 
local system, and their mental and spiritual nature 
would not be out of correlation. 

Inferior race types have a beauty of their own. 
This, with its rules and standards, the superior race 
comprehends and admits for what it is worth. Criti- 
cism, therefore, is inclusive. Only a narrow and super- 
ficial zealot promulgates restrictive dogmas — such, for 

[44] 



WHAT IS CRITICISM f 

instance, as the claim that a striking theme is of no 
value in art. The general appreciation of an impres- 
sive motive or topic, imaginatively presented, and even 
apart from the technical quality of the work, is some- 
thing to be recognized by a healthy judgment. 

Above all, I conform to the belief that the great and 
final office of the critic is to distinguish between what 
is temporary or modish^ and zvhat is enduring, in any 
phase, type, or product, of human work. I have said 
nothing of the humor, sympathy, insight, personal 
style, which enhance the strength and constitute the 
charm of critical writing. The foregoing points are 
merely a restatement of what seems to me the merest 
primer of criticism, given with as little sophistication 
as possible and in the briefest space. 



[45] 



Ill 

A BELT OF ASTEROIDS' 

"VTOW and then a name becomes durably known in 
-*-^ literature through the reputation of a single 
fugitive poem. Our English lyrical system has, of 
course, its greater and lesser planets, with their groups 
of attendant satellites. At irregular periods, some 
comet flashes into view, lights up the skies for a time, 
and then disappears beyond the vision. Whether, 
after the completion of a cycle, it will again attract 
attention and become an accepted portion of this solar 
family, or whether, being of a transient though garish 
presence, it will lessen forever upon its hyperbolic 
skyway, cannot always be determined by observers. 
And lastly, at the risk of tearing a metaphor to tatters, 
I may say that there are scattered through certain 
intervals of the system, like those fragments between 
the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, the asteroidal poets, 
each of whom we have recognized by a single and 
distinctive point of light. 

The one effort of an amateur is accepted by the 

people, or gains favor with compilers who select and 

preserve whatever is of lasting value. The result is 

a wide public knowledge of these kinless poems, and 

^ The Galaxy, January, 1869. 

[46] 



A BELT OF ASTEROIDS 

of the facts which have attended their begetting; so 
that I shall not hunt for new matter, or reason too 
curiously upon my theme. Rather let me associate a 
few of the best-known and even hackneyed pieces of 
this sort, while the reader considers the philosophy 
of their production and success. 

One is tempted to borrow a title from the British 
politicians, who, as everybody knows, called a member 
of Parliament '' Single-Speech Hamilton," after his 
delivery of a sound and persuasive harangue upon the 
finances, in November, 1775. If the essence of fun 
be incongruity, then the nickname was not amiss, for 
it was certainly incongruous and odd that a member, 
who had dozed through silent terms, should jump up 
at a crisis and add unexpected strength to his party 
by the eloquence of a trained rhetorician and a wisdom 
which none dreamed he could possess. I have no 
doubt that, before morning, at the clubs, hundreds and 
fifties were offered against his ever speaking again. 
If so, he must have become as obnoxious to those who 
took the odds as were the portly old buffers who 
darkened coffee-house windows long beyond the dates 
at which the younger bucks had wagered that apoplexy 
would seize them; for Hamilton, having once tasted 
renown, did, it seems, essay more speeches, thereby 
putting the nicknamers and gamesters to confusion; 
which leads De Quincey to remark, with a chuckle 
over the whimsies of humanity, that the generation 
" had greatly esteemed the man called Single-Speech 
Hamilton, not at all for the speech (which, though 
good, very few people had read), but entirely from 

[47] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

the supposed fact that he had exhausted himself in 
one speech, and had been physically incapable of mak- 
ing a second; so that afterward, when he did make 
a second, everybody was incredulous, until, the thing 
being demonstrated, naturally the world was disgusted, 
and most people dropped his acquaintance." 

The world is thus jealous of its preconceived opin- 
ions, or of rivalry to an established favorite, and will 
always array the old against the new. It begrudges 
a chance hand the right to hit the bull's-eye more than 
once, and measures each successive shot with unkind 
exactness; so that only those who have the root of 
the matter in them, and do better and better, are at 
all advanced by fresh trials after one triumph. A first 
achievement will be merged, and thought even less 
of, among equal others of the kind. 

That was a shrewder fellow, of our own day and 
country, who took warning from Hamilton's misfor- 
tunes, and delivered his single speech at the close of 
a long Senatorial term, knowing that the loss of an 
election had put him beyond the perils of anti-climax. 
Sitting at his desk — he had been a cripple for years — 
and talking off his speech in the most random manner, 
he was logical and humorous by turns, drove black 
care from the Senate Chamber, and threw a singularly 
grotesque glamor over the last night of that doleful 
session which preceded the opening of our civil war. 
Next morning he left in a blaze of glory for Kentucky, 
and, so far as I know, was never heard of more. 

Our business, however, is not with the politicians, 
but with that superior race, the poets. Not that these 

[48] 



A BELT OF ASTEROIDS 

songsters are exempted from a common law. If, once 
in a while, some brown domestic bird varies his wonted 
piping, and breaks out in passionate and melodious 
notes; or, when a brilliant-plumed creature, kept rather 
for ornament than song, seems to have borrowed the 
throstle's minstrelsy — if these venture again, the one 
must have lighter trills and quavers, and the other a 
purer and more assured sweetness, or it will be said 
of each that 

— he never could recapture 
The first fine careless rapture. 

Many a second performance has thus been stifled 
within the hearing of us all. 

He who has discerned and made available the one 
fortunate moment of his life, has not lived entirely 
in vain. Multitudes pass through the sacred garden 
unawares, with their eyes fixed upon illusions far 
away. Yet there comes to most persons a time when 
they are lifted above the hard level of common life 
to the region of spiritual emotion and discovery. The 
dullest eye will catch glimpses to make one less for- 
lorn; the ear will be suddenly unsealed, and hear the 
bells of heaven ring; the mouth will be touched with 
fire, and utter imaginative speech. Were there not 
something divine in each of us, a poet would find no 
listeners. Thus the crises of passion, joy and pain, 
which are inevitable for all, often raise the most plod- 
ding to a comprehension of the rapture of the poet, 
the devotion of the martyr, the assurance of the leader 

[49] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

of his kind. The clear vision demands, and for the 
moment seems to carry with it, a new gift of ex- 
pression. Men speak with tongues they never knew 
before; yet, when the Pentecost is over, relapse into 
their ordinary existence, and wonder no less than 
others at what it has been given them to do. 

A chance lyric composed in this wise, and the sole 
performance which has interested the world in its 
author, has frequently seemed to the latter so light 
a thing that he has neglected to identify his name 
with its success. Scores of the ballads which mark 
the growth of our English poetry, and are now gath- 
ered and edited as a portion of its history, have given 
no fame to the minor poets who sang them, 

Ere days that deal in ana swarmed 
Their literary leeches. 

Doubtless not a few of those notable anonymous 
pieces, which people love to attribute to some favorite 
author or hero, have been, could we only determine 
it, the single productions of amateurs. There is " The 
Lye," for example, which is claimed for Sir Walter 
Raleigh, and is quite good enough for him to have 
written — is better than anything established as his 
own — yet whose authorship is still in escrow between 
Raleigh, Sylvester, and others of less repute. There 
are some plaintive stanzas, which commence, '' Defiled 
is my name full sore," and profess to be the lament 
of Queen Anne Boleyne from her prison cell, but 
are undoubtedly the work of another hand. The 

[50] 



A BELT OF ASTEROIDS 

, lovers of that soldierly canticle, " How Stands the 
Glass Around ? " indignant that so lusty and winsome 
a child should be a foundling, have tried to fix its 
paternity upon Gen. James Wolfe, because that chival- 
rous Englisher delighted in it, and used to troll it 
melodiously across the board. This catch, more 
widely recognized by the second stanza — 

Why, soldiers, why 

Should you be melancholy, boys? 

Why, soldiers, why. 

Whose business 'tis to die? 

is indeed the perfection of a soldier's banqueting song 
— not only pathetic and musical, but with cadences 
of rhythm so adjusted that it has a pulsing accent at 
intervals which relate to the drum-beat and the martial 
tread of ranks. Any poet might be glad to have 
composed it. We have it, as copied from a half-sheet 
of music printed about the year 1710. Perhaps it 
was brought over from the Low Countries by Marl- 
borough's men; yet there is the ring of Dryden's 
measures about it, and a poet, whose instinct upon 
such matters is almost unfailing, has declared to me 
that he would venture to ascribe it to glorious John 
upon this internal evidence alone. The authors of a 
hundred comparatively modern ballads and ditties, like 
" The Children in the Wood," " Comin' Thro' the 
Rye," " When this old Cap was New," have left 
their voices alone behind them; yet each voice seems 
to have a distinctive quality of its own. Who wTote 
*'The White Rose," that darling little conceit of a 

[51] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

Yorkish lover to his Lancastrian mistress? The twin 
stanzas have become a jewel upon the " stretched fore- 
finger of all time." James Somerville laid violent 
hands upon them, early in the last century, remodelled 
them, and added three verses of his own, each weaker 
than the predecessor. It has been the fate of many 
pretty wanderers to be thus kidnapped and rechris- 
tened, and sometimes, fortunately, by nobler craft than 
Somerville's, to be changed to something truly rich 
and rare. As when John Milton based *' II Pen- 
seroso " upon the verses " In Praise of Melancholy," 
commencing — 

Hence, all ye vain delights ! 

and ending 

Here stretch our bones in a still, gloomy valley, 
Nothing's so dainty sweet as lonely melancholy. 

These have been claimed for Fletcher, since he 
inserted them in his play of '' The Nice Valour," but 
possibly were composed by Dr. William Strode, who 
flourished in the first half of the seventeenth century. 
Dr. Strode is also thought to have written a lyric often 
quoted as Dryden's, *' The Commendation of Music," 
which contains some delicate lines: 

Oh, lull me, lull me, charming air. 
My senses rocked with wonder sweet! 
Like snow on wool thy" fallings are, 
Soft like a spirit are thy feet. 

[52] 



A BELT OF ASTEROIDS 

Campbell found the key-note of his resonant naval 
ode, '' Ye Mariners of England," in the lines, " Ye 
Gentlemen of England," written by Martyn Parker 
so long before. Burns worked over the old North 
Country ballad of '' Sir John Barleycorn," as well 
as many an ancient Scottish song; and Shakespeare — 
but I need not multiply examples. The rude strong 
choruses which have sprung up in great campaigns, 
or at times of revolutionary excitement, have been the 
offspring of single minds, though verse after verse 
has been mated with them by the people. Such are 
the burdens of the French '' Malbrouck " and " Ca 
Ira," the Irish " Shan Van Vocht," and our own grim 
battle-chorus of '' John Brown's Body " — yet it would 
be difficult to prove that they had not " growed " 
like Topsy, without the formality of a beginning. I 
take it, in brief, that many of the noteworthy anony- 
mous poems were the handiwork of single-poem 
makers. Artists who have become favorably known 
by continuous effort are not careless of their titles to 
successful work, nor do the book-wrights often 
permit specimens of the acknowledged masters to be 
lost. 

The composers of our most familiar random poems 
are of several types. First, those whose one inspira- 
tion has come from a sentiment — like the love of 
home, of country, of sweetheart, of wife and off- 
spring. Such have sung because a chance emotion 
would have vent, and their song has found a greeting 
in the common heart, independently of much artistic 
right to consideration. Next are the natural rhyme- 

[531 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

sters, with their sound and fury. If one makes verses 
perpetually, the odds are that he will at some time 
find something worth to say, or that he will hit upon 
a theme in which his fellows have a genuine interest; 
and when these chances come together, the result is 
a popular acceptation of what is produced, while 
against the rest of the author's jingles we stop our 
ears. Again, there are persons of high culture and 
beautiful thought, who have the gift of expression, 
but who have neglected its practice, either being suffi- 
cient unto themselves, or with their energies so diffused 
in other walks of life that they have only yielded in a 
gracious or impassioned moment to utterance of the 
lays for which we gratefully remember them. 

A fugitive poem thus depends for its preservation 
upon an appeal to the universal emotions; or, through 
its real merits, gives pleasure to cultured minds, who 
insure it ultimate renown by Ruskin's process of the 
transfer of correct taste from the judicious to the 
unskilful. Here and there one combines these attrac- 
tions, and thus achieves the high dual purpose of art. 
A lyric of the first kind often allies itself to an air 
so taking that we can hardly say whether the poetry 
or the music has made the hit. But some verses, like 
" God save the King," are such utter mouthing that 
their entire success has evidently depended on the 
tune. If not, old-time British loyalty was a senti- 
ment beyond modern comprehension. Yet there are 
happy instances in our own language, more frequently 
among the Scotch and Irish dialects, of '* perfect music 
unto noble words; " while there are other widely 

[54] 



A BELT OF ASTEROIDS 

popular stanzas, for which musical composers have 
tried in vain to find a consonant melody, and thus 
express their very sense. 

Among poems which are endeared to the people by 
their themes is that strictly American production, 
"The Bucket" of Samuel Woodworth. Without 
great poetical merit, it calls up simple idyllic memories 
to every one who has been a country boy, whether he 
has gained in manhood the prizes of life, or is still 
a trouble-tossed wanderer. To most Americans, home 
has been a place to start from, and only loved when 
left forever. Yet through the sentiment of home and 
a pleasant sensuous reminiscence of boyhood, " The 
Bucket " has found its way to numberless hearts. And 
Woodworth, when writing it, was lifted, for perhaps 
the only time in his life, to the genuine emotion of 
the poet, yearning after the sunny meadows, the fons 
splendidior vitro^ and the moss-covered bucket of his 
rustic days. He was indeed a tempest-beaten fellow; 
a printer, born in Scituate, Mass., and a hard-worked, 
generally unfortunate hack and journalist, from 1816 
down to his death in 1842. Except his one famous 
song, I can find nothing worth a day's remembrance 
in his collected poems, of which a volume was pub- 
lished in 18 1 8, and again in 1827. Yet he wrote other 
pieces in the same metre and with as much care and 
purpose. His patriotic songs during the war of 18 12 
had a wide reading, as things went then. All are of 
the copy-book order; his was a tame, didactic mind; 
he never wrote but one poem, and that of itself pre- 
serves his name. " The Bucket " belongs to the lower 

[55] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

or basic strata of the Parnassus mountain — ^the emo- 
tional (yet here it occurs to me that these crop out 
again near the apex, as in some lofty dramatic out- 
burst, like 

Grief fills the room up of my absent child !) 

and this household poem, without the factitious aid 
of a popular air, holds a place by its own music and 
the associations which it conveys. 

Indeed, I am not sure that the present article was not 
suggested by a visit made one day to the rooms where 
a painter has translated into his own form of ex- 
pression this and another of our simplest primary 
lyrics. Multitudes are now buying the pretty chromo- 
lithographs of Jerome Thompson's paintings of " The 
Old Oaken Bucket," and " Home, Sweet Home "; nor 
do I hesitate to say that few more grateful and attrac- 
tive pictures, within the means of the average country- 
dweller, can hang upon his walls, than these truthful 
representations of the birth-place of Samuel Wood- 
worth, and the " Sweet Home " of John Howard 
Payne.^ 

The last-named ditty, though still more obviously 
depending upon a sentiment, has a world of help from 
the air to which it was composed. Looking at the 

^This, without discussion of the merits of the paintings or 
the good and evil effects of distributing their lithographic copies 
among the people. It seems to me, however, that Mr. Thomp- 
son's pictures have the feeling and suggestiveness of the songs 
for which they are named; and the colored prints are the most 
carefully finished of those yet produced in this country. 

[56] 



A BELT OF ASTEROIDS 

stirring life and many writings of its author, it seems 
strange that such ordinary stanzas should be the pro- 
duction by which he is known, and here mentioned 
as his single poem. Payne was a Xew Yorker, born 
in 1792, and, by an odd coincidence, his first essays 
were contributed to a juvenile paper called TJie Fly, 
published by Samuel Woodworth at the Boston office, 
where the latter learned his trade. The former was 
only seventeen years old when he made a famous sen- 
sation at the Park, as Young Xorval, following it up 
W'ith the enactment of all sorts of parts at many 
American theatres, and soon playing as second to 
George Frederick Cooke. He had taken to the stage 
for the support of a widowed mother, breaking off a 
collegiate course at Union. In 18 13 he went to Eng- 
land and came out at Drury Lane ; then turned author 
again, and made his first literary success in the tragedy 
of '' Brutus," which he wrote for Edmund Kean, and 
which still holds "the stage." He also wrote '' Vir- 
ginius " and " Therese," and I don't know what, but 
the facts about " Home, Sweet Home '' may bear 
telling again. For years Payne was an available play- 
wright and craftsman in the London dramatic world. 
^Vhen Charles Kemble became manager of Covent 
Garden, he purchased a batch of our author's manu- 
scripts for the gross sum of £230; and a play was 
fished out from the mess, changed by Payne into an 
opera, and produced as " Clari, the Maid of ]\Iilan." 
Miss Tree, the elder sister of Mrs. Charles Kean, was 
in the first cast, and sang " Home, Sweet Home," one 
of the " gems " of this piece. It made an astounding 

[57] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

hit, was speedily the popular favorite, and even at 
this day we may say that the air and words are the 
surest key, on the reappearance of a pet diva, to unlock 
the hearts of her welcomers. Those who were present 
will not forget the return of Kellogg to our Academy 
on the 19th of last October, and the tenderness and 
grace with which she sang them; nor the encores of 
the audience, and the flowers which dropped around 
her till she seemed like a melodious bird in Eden. 
" Sweet Home " was only reckoned at £30 to its 
author, but was a fortune to those who purchased it. 
In 1832, 100,000 copies had been sold by the original 
publisher, and the profits within two years after its 
issue were two thousand guineas. For all this, it is 
nothing but a homely, unpoetical statement of the most 
characteristic sentiment of the Teutonic race. The 
music had gained no former triumph; but wedded to 
the idea of home, and sounded in Anglo-Saxon ears, 
it became irresistible, and will hold its own for genera- 
tions. " 'Midst pleasures and palaces '' is as bad as 
bad can be, but match it with the assertion " There's 
no place like Home ! " and we all accept the one for 
the sake of the other. 

Nor is it strange that in America — where homes 
are so transitory and people are like the brooks which 
go on forever — this sentiment should take hold as 
firmly as in the Motherland. It is because our home- 
tenure here is so precarious that we cling to its ideali- 
zation. Conversely, we have little of that itch to pos- 
sess land — to own so many roods of earth to the centre 
• — which our adopted citizens display. The Yankee 

[58] 



A BELT OF ASTEROIDS 

undervalues the attainable, and is so used to see land at 
low rates about him that he can scarcely understand 
the eagerness with which a Frenchman or German 
receives his title-deeds to some barren hillside in 
Pennsylvania or a quarter section along the overland 
route. 

Payne was too much of an actor to be a poet. His 
youthful features, judging from the likeness taken in 
his seventeenth year, were of a singularly mobile and 
expressive type. Not long ago, some of his MSS., 
and a portrait of him in later manhood, were offered 
for sale in this city, as a part of a virtuoso's collec- 
tion. The face there given would readily have ob- 
tained a place in Eugene Benson's gallery of those 
which are beautiful and suggestive. He was, also, 
too much of a playwright and author to become a 
great actor; and too much a man of affairs to stick 
to any profession continuously. As last he made a 
long retirement, as Consul at Tunis, and might have 
produced an epic if he had known how. Before this, 
his employments were as diverse as those of Shake- 
speare ; but the gap between the capacities of two such 
beings is wide as the arch from pole to pole, though 
they stand on a common axis of chosen work. 

As for Payne's one song, it would seem that any 
stanzas, thus widely known and endeared, have a more 
than ordinary claim for admission to a collection which 
aims to present the noteworthy accepted poetry of 
the English language. So that, while glad to repeat 
the general approval of Mr. Dana's volume, and to 
acknowledge that it contains, on the whole, the most 

[59] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

conscientious, scholarly, and catholic presentation 
which has yet been made^ — I am surprised that the 
critical editor has not, in the case of " Home, Sweet 
Home," so far overstepped his limit of the " truly 
beautiful and admirable " as to admit it. Of course 
it goes to the rear on the score of poetical defects; 
but on what ground are introduced the more objec- 
tionable stanzas of " God Save the King " ? As the 
national British anthem ? But " Home, Sweet 
Home " is the people's and children's song of all 
English-speaking countries, and its very title is a 
plea for a humble corner in any Household Book of 
Poetry. 

Mention of " God Save the King " suggests national 
hymns, and we notice that the leading patriotic songs 
of France, England, and the United States, are the 
single works of their authors, unless we allow George 
Saville Carey's claim that his father wrote the British 
national anthem, and give credit to Queen Hortense 
for the words as well as the pretty music of *' Partant 
pour la Syrie." For Hortense, with all her faults, 
was a sweet musician and verse-maker, and executed 
other agreeable works; yet in her best-known song 
most exactly expressed the courtly, chivalrous vivacity 
of a people who fight and make love pari passu, and 
gaily interblend their patriotism, gallantry, and love 
of fame. Both the poem and the music have that 
" quality " which, refined by culture, so wins us in 
the minor art of France. Despite their " temporary 
and trivial " nature they have other claims to the 
affection of her people than the accident of the Second 

[60] 



A BELT OF ASTEROIDS 

Empire. After all, they are not quite the thing, and 
the French Minister of War is advertising for a 
worthy national hymn. He will scarcely obtain it 
from a leading poet. Mr. Grant White has told us 
how national hymns are written and not written, and 
it is a fact that nearly all which have not grown among 
the people, have resulted from the glow of patriotism 
in the hearts of citizen-laymen, with whom love of 
country was a compelling inspiration. 

The " Marseillaise " is a preeminent example of a 
single lyrical outburst from the soul of an unprofes- 
sional poet. It is the real battle-hymn of an oppressed 
France, and in her struggles for liberty will never 
be supplanted by any manufactured successor. After 
a long suppression, it was again made the national 
song when Louis Philippe gained the throne by the 
revolution of 1830; but when the Citizen-King forgot 
his citizenship, he, too, was compelled to flee before its 
chorus. It is the most historical and dramatic of 
lyrics. The one flight which Rouget-de-Lisle took 
was that of an eagle, soaring to the empyrean, and 
disdaining a lower reach. When a soldier invades 
the province of the poet, composes such a song at a 
single heat, and, like the bards of old, summons from 
his harp the music that shall match them, it is not safe 
to deny anything to the inspiration of mere amateurs. 
The man's whole life was crowded into that night 
at Strasbourg, and with it all the frenzy and devotion 
of a bleeding land. 

Both our American national poems are the compo- 
sitions of lawyers, who are known for little else which 

[61] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

they wrote, outside the judicial reports. Neither 
seems to have had any sacred fury in his nature that 
was not evoked by patriotism. That which Judge 
Joseph Hopkinson gave out in *' Hail, Columbia," was 
of a sufficiently humdrum kind. He had the music 
of the " President's March " as a copy before him, and 
his verses are little better or worse than the air. The 
Judge was born in 1770, and was a spruce young 
lawyer in the summer of 1798, when war with France 
seemed imminent, and Congress was holding an excited 
session at Philadelphia. He wrote his ode at a sitting, 
for the benefit of an actor, who had vainly exhausted 
the poets of the theatrical company, in an effort to 
adopt words to the stilted march then most in favor. 
Hopkinson was appealed to on Saturday, wrote the 
song on Sunday, heard it from a stage-box on the 
next evening; and it made a great sensation. The 
citizens joined in the chorus night after night, and 
the jurist-author found himself renowned for life by 
a rude homily upon Columbia in prose chopped to the 
metre. He was afterward a member of Congress, 
then a Judge of the United States District Court, and 
died within the memory of most of us at the good old 
age of seventy-two. 

Francis Scott Key swept the chords more tunefully 
in his " Star-Spangled Banner," which has merits that 
would give it a leasehold, independently of the spirited 
music to which it was composed. Its obvious rhymes 
and adjectives — " haughty host," "dread silence," 
" foul footsteps' pollution," etc., are little suited to the 
naturalism of our later day, but the burden, 

[62] 



A BELT OF ASTEROIDS 

'Tis the star-spangled banner ; O long may it wave 
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave ! 



was that v^^hich a popular refrain should be, the strong 
common sentiment of a nation; and Key, for once in 
his life, expressed the feeling of a true poet. He died 
shortly after Hopkinson, whose junior he was by seven 
years. He wrote some religious pieces, and a few 
other songs, none of which have outlived their period; 
though one, '' On the Return of Decatur," had a brief 
reputation. It is in the Adams-and-Liberty metre of 
the " Star-Spangled Banner," and exemplifies the sing- 
song rhythm into which men like Woodworth and Key 
are apt to fall, and which often commends itself to 
the popular taste. It is the bacon-and-greens, so to 
speak, of the feast of song, and not much relished by 
cultivated palates. 

That most original and resonant lyric, the " Carmen 
Bellicosum "of Guy Humphrey McMaster, is far re- 
moved from these, except by the common theme of de- 
fence of country. Here is a noble chant indeed! 
Trumbull, in his pictures, effected no more than this 
writer has given us with a single dash of the pen — an 
interpretation of the very spirit of 'y6. The " Carmen 
Bellicosum " — every one will recall its opening verse. 

In their ragged regimentals 
Stood the old Continentals, 
Yielding not. 

occupies a unique position among English lyrics. 
There is nothing like it in our language; 'tis the ring- 

[63] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

ing, characteristic utterance of an original man. There 
is a perfect wedding of sense to sound, and of both 
to the spirit of the theme. To include a picture often 
ruins a song; but here we have the knot of patriots 
clustered upon a battle-hillside, the powder cracking 
amain, the old-fashioned colonel galloping with drawn 
sword, and as 

Rounder, rounder, rounder, roars the old six-pounder, 
Hurling death, 

it seems a heavier piece of ordnance, and charged with 
weightier issues, than the whole park of artillery in 
a modern armament. 

The song will last with the memory of revolutionary 
days. I know little of its author, save that he is also 
a lawyer and a judge, presiding over the Steuben 
County Court in this, his native State. He is now 
about forty years of age, and must have been quite 
young when his *' Carmen " appeared in the old Knick- 
erbocker Magazine. Ha stripling attorney will enter 
the minstrel lists, sound such a potent blast, then with- 
draw himself to the happy life of a country-gentleman, 
nor be heard again through all these years, he also 
must, for the present, be numbered in our catalogue 
of the single-poem poets. 

McMaster is a Scotch or North-Irish patronymic, 
and the Scotch have ever been in the custom of pro- 
ducing fugitive lyrics of a true poetical quality. These 
ditties relate more frequently to the strongest of all 
emotions — that of love between man and woman — 

[64] 



A BELT OF ASTEROIDS 

than to the love of home or fatherland. Two of the 
sweetest will at once recur to the reader. " Auld 
Robin Gray " was composed by Anne Lyndsay, after- 
ward Lady Barnard, as long ago as 1772, at Balcarras 
in Fife. Her father was the Earl of that ilk. She 
was an elegant, spirited girl, not yet out of her teens, 
when an old air, set to a loose old song, '' The Bride- 
groom grat when the sun gaed doun," gave her a 
motive for her work. The lassie had learned the tune, 
in such mischievous ways as our liberal maids doubt- 
less know of in these prudish times, and thought the 
pensive measure deserved more fitting words. She 
chose for her text the world-wide plaint that '^ Crabbed 
Age and Youth cannot live together " — a theme as 
ancient in English as Chaucer's " January and May " 
— took the name of Gray from an old herd in the 
vicinage, and wrote as sweet and pathetic a ballad as 
exists in any tongue. The first stanza, 

When the sheep are in the fauld and the kye at hame. 

is now, I believe, the only one sung to the antique 
tune. From the second, " Young Jamie lov'd me 
weel," to the close, the music, written thirty years 
since by the Rev. W. Lewes, is still most in use. Lady 
Anne's ballad was not given to the public till 1776, 
and, as it at once became famous, a prolonged dispute 
arose concerning its authorship. Modesty prevented 
the authoress from claiming her laurels. How could 
a debonair young maiden own herself familiar with 
the wanton ditty, " The Bridegroom grat " ? Not till 

[65] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

she had been many years the wedded wife of Sir An- 
drew Barnard, and the shadows of death were close 
at hand, did she write her letter to Sir Walter, avow- 
ing the authorship, and narrating at length what I 
have briefly told. She composed a few other verses, 
but nothing to compare with the ballad for which we 
remember her name. 

There is pretty good warrant for saying that the 
soldiers' darling, " Annie Laurie," was the work of 
Mr. Douglas, of Fingland, who courted Anne, a fair 
daughter of Sir Robert Laurie, the first baronet of 
Maxwelton. This was near the commencement of 
the last century. The song, as it now exists, is gen- 
erally classed as anonymous in our anthologies; but 
has been so refined and annealed through various cru- 
cibles that the current version is quite different from 
the two stanzas which Douglas wrote, and certainly 
more artistic. His are thus given in the Ballad Book, 
which contains the earliest printed copy : 

Maxwelton banks are bonnie 

Where early fa's the dew; 
Where I and Annie Laurie 

Made up the promise true; 
Made up the promise true, 

And never forget will I, 
And for bonnie Annie Laurie 

I'd lay me doun and die. 

She's backit like a peacock, 

She's breistit Hke a swan. 
She's jimp about the middle. 

Her waist you weel micht span ; 
[66] 



A BELT OF ASTEROIDS 

Her waist you weel micht span ; 

And she has a rolling eye, 
And for bonnie Annie Laurie 

I'd lay me doun and die. 



The heroine's rolling eye cast its glances away 
from poor Douglas, and she married a Mr. Ferguson, 
of Craigdarrock, who found some better mode of win- 
ning a maiden's heart than singing under her window- 
panes. After all, the pleasure is as great in loving as 
in being loved; and, to put the matter allegorically, 
Apollo, indignant at the slight inflicted by Venus upon 
his servant, gave him, unawares, a seat in his temple, 
and ordained that, for centuries, lovers should sing the 
song of him who sang in vain. 

What manlier love-poetry was ever written than the 
verses, " To his Mistress," of James Grahame, Mar- 
quis of Montrose, wherein he vowed 



I'll make thee famous by my pen, 
And glorious by my sword! 



The poem itself fulfilled half the pledge. More 
than two hundred years have gone by, and still no lines 
are more often quoted than this quatrain from the 
same lyric : 

He either fears his fate too much, 

Or his deserts are small. 
Who dares not put it to the touch 

To gain or lose it all. 

[67] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 
Not more famous is the distich, 

Stone walls do not a prison make, 
Nor iron bars a cage, 

from Dick Lovelace's stanzas " To Althaea, from 
Prison "; though the handsome cavalier left many an- 
other ditty to distinguish him from our birds of a 
single flight. The lines here mentioned are the second 
example we have reached of the music, real or imag- 
ined, of imprisoned songsters; and to them I might 
add the Latin verses, ''In Dura Catena," attributed 
to the Queen of Scots — certainly the one poem written 
by the Fayre Gospeller, Anne Askewe, who was burned 
at the stake by command of brutal and dying Harry, 
in 1546. After her last examination upon the rack, 
she was inspired to utter, in a Newgate cell, the heroic 
defiance : 

Like as the armed knight 

Appointed to the field. 
With this world will I fight. 

And faith shall be my shield. 

We can well believe the statement of one who saw the 
girl led to execution, that *' she had an angel's counte- 
nance and a smiling face." Poor Anne's verses have 
been preserved rather for her story's sake and for 
their religious ardor, than for poetical excellence; and 
it is noticeable that hymns, and fugitive lyrics ani- 
mated with religious hope or aspiration, have a fairer 
chance, other things being equal, of obtaining a con- 

[68] 



A BELT OF ASTEROIDS 

tinned hearing than ahiiost any class — those appeahng 
to the " master passion " alone excepted. Reflective 
poems, tinged with that melancholy which comes to 
one chastened by the experiences of life, are also 
widely in favor. 

'* I would not live Alway " has everywhere made the 
name of our venerable citizen. Dr. ]\Iuhlenberg, a 
household word. He wrote it many years since, with 
no thought that it would ever be used for the devotions 
of the church, but has long seen it in the hymnology 
of most Protestant denominations, and encountered 
many pseudo-claimants to its authorship. Among 
these I knew an old printer, of Litchfield, Connecticut, 
who imagined he had composed it, and periodically 
filled a column in the village newspaper with evidence 
to further his claim. But Dr. Muhlenberg's title can- 
not be shaken. Another poem, upon a kindred theme, 
though with the element of hope omitted, was popular 
with the sad Calvinists of the last generation, but had 
almost faded out, when an accidental connection with 
the name of President Lincoln gave it a new lease of 
life, which may continue with the memory of the great 
Liberator. He was so fond of repeating the monody, 

O why should the spirit of mortal be proud ? 

that by some persons he was credited with its com- 
position, until the press recognized the work of Wil- 
liam Knox, who died a. d. 1825, at Edinburgh, in his 
thirty-seventh year. These lines are expressive of a 
brooding Scotch melancholy, pitched in a minor re- 

[69] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

ligious key, and in certain moods not ineffective as a 
quaint and forceful meditation upon an ever-pressing 
theme. Their whole motive is condensed in the terse 
old formula, " All flesh is grass "; but a Sicilian poet, 
the pagan Moschus, found even this an insufficient 
image of the hopelessness of mortality. Let me give 
a naked translation (from the v^onderful Epitaph of 
Bion), of the most sorrowful passage ever constructed 
outside of Hebrew writ : 

Even the mallows — alas ! alas ! — when once in the garden 
They, or the pale-green parsley and crisp-growing anise, 

have perished, 
Afterward they will live and flourish again at their season ; 

We, the great and brave, or the wise — when death has 

benumbed us — 
Deaf in the hollow ground a silent, infinite slumber 
Sleep; forever we lie in the trance that knoweth no 

waking. 

The drear and homely verses of Mr. Lincoln's favor- 
ite poem have already gained the suffrage of those 
gentlemen whose favor is such an omen of longevity — 
the makers of school-books. I find it in the latest 
Reader, along with such selections as Lincoln's " Ad- 
dress at Gettysburg," Read's ^' Sheridan's Ride," 
Bayard Taylor's " Scott and the Veteran," Whittier's 
" Barbara Freitchie," and other new-born pieces, which 
are to the rising generation what the " Speech of 
Patrick Henry," ''Marco Bozzaris," or ''Stand! the 
Ground's Your Own, My Braves ! " were to ourselves, 
a few — it seems a very few — summers and winters 
ago. 

[70] 



A BELT OF ASTEROIDS 

Sexagenarians can remember the notoriety given 
Herbert Knowles — an English youth who died at Can- 
terbury in his twentieth year — by Robert Southey, who 
set him forth in the London Quarterly as a second 
Kirke White. Knowles was a precocious religious 
poet, and his surviving verses are '' Lines Written in 
the Churchyard of Richmond," to the text, Matt, 
xvii., 4: 

Methinks it is good to be here! 

If thou wilt, let us build, but to whom? 

These will appear in many future compilations; and 
so will the thoughtful numbers of our own country- 
woman, Harriet Winslow: 

Why thus longing, thus forever sighing 
For the far-off, unattained and dim ? 

But a more impassioned and elevated single poem is 
that fervent composition imagined to have been writ- 
ten by *^ Milton on his Blindness " — the work of a 
Quaker lady, Elizabeth Lloyd,^ of Philadelphia. 
These truly " noble numbers " deserve the attention 
which they gained upon their first appearance, at which 
time paragraphists went so far as to call them Milton's 
own, and credit them to an Oxford edition of his 
poems. They are not Miltonic in the least, but exhibit 
a rapturous inspiration, and of themselves have in- 
sured their writer a long regard. 

' Now Mrs. E. L. Howell. 
[71] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

Occasionally straightforward rhymes, with a moral, 
like " The Three Warnings " of Mrs. Hester Lynch 
Piozzi — ^Johnson's Mrs. Thrale — have held their own, 
either for their shrewd wisdom, or for the associations 
connected with their author. 

But which of all the asteroids that have passed be- 
fore our vision — whether tinged with a domestic, 
patriotic, amorous, or sombre light — will be longer or 
more lovingly regarded than the children's own poem 
and dearest — " 'Twas the Night before Christmas " ? 
written for them so daintily by a sage college pro- 
fessor, Clement C. Moore, to wit, long time a resident 
of this old Dutch city, and deceased (peace to his 
ashes !) hardly more than four or five years ago. " A 
Visit from St. Nicholas " is dear to the little ones for 
its exquisite fancies and the annual legend, and to us 
all for our beautiful memories of childhood and home. 
It is linked with the natal festival of Christendom, is 
entirely true to its purpose, and finished as deftly as 
if the author had been a professional poet. Few of 
those who were his contemporaries, and who know 
every word of this sparkling fantasia, have been fami- 
liar with the details of his quiet and industrious life. 
He was born in 1779, and grew up a studious philolo- 
gist, as his Hebrew and English lexicon, issued in 
1809, still attests. Twelve years afterward he was 
made Professor of Biblical Learning in the New York 
Episcopal Theological Seminary, and more lately took 
the chair of Oriental and Greek Literature. Despite 
all this, and rich besides, he wrote poetry, and a vol- 
ume of his rhymes appeared in 1844. They were of 

[72] 



A BELT OF ASTEROIDS 

an ephemeral nature, except the poem \vhich I would 
have gone far to hear him repeat in his old, old age, 
and for which my younger readers must always re- 
member his venerable name. 

Let us not overlook a lyric, of which many have, 
probably, already thought — the Rev. Charles \A^olfe's 
" Burial of Sir John ]\Ioore.'' Xo fugitive piece has 
had a wider or more potential circulation than this 
school-boy favorite; yet who. besides the men of let- 
ters, have troubled themselves concerning its author, 
or known of other graceful verses by his hand? A 
few have read the song which he made to the Irish 
air, " Grammachree.'' It is said that he sang the 
music over until it affected him to tears, and impelled 
him to write his equally pathetic lament, in such 
stanzas as the following: 

If I had thought thou couldst have died 

I might not weep for thee ; 
But I forgot when by thy side. 

That thou couldst mortal be. 
It never through my mind had past 

The time would e'er be o'er,^ 
And I on thee should look my last. 

And thou shouldst smile no more! 

But we must here cease our obserA'ation of poets 
who come strictly within the prescribed limits of the 
telescopic field. I have barely space enough for refer- 

^ The blemish in this line would not be overlooked by a poet 
of Wolfe's quality, in these days of mosaic art. 

[73] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

ence to a few of those whose reputation has been won 
by Hfe-long devotion to their art, yet of whose re- 
spective productions some one piece has, in each in- 
stance, gained the world's ear, and often to the neglect 
of other excellent works. The poems hitherto con- 
sidered are more widely known than their authors; 
while to name a poet of the class to which I now 
allude, is to start in the mind the key-measure of his 
representative poem. Examples of this effect are al- 
ways numerous, and especially in present remembrance 
of the poets who wrote long ago — Time so winnows 
out and sets apart the general choice, whether it be 
such coarse healthful grain as that from which jovial 
Bishop Still brewed his " Good Ale "— 



Back and side go bare, go bare; 

Both foot and hand go cold; 
But belly, God send thee good ale enough. 

Whether it be new or old! 



or the golden barley on which singing birds like 
Thomas Lodge and Sir Henry Wotton had fed, ere 
they warbled such dainty lyrics as " Love in my bosom 
like a Bee," and " You meaner beauties of the night." 
These two, and many another canticle of their period, 
you can find in R. H. Stoddard's most choice selec- 
tion of English Melodies and Madrigals. Are James 
Shirley and Edmund Waller popularly remembered 
by single lyrics? Nearly so, for in the one case the 
two stanzas of Shirley's " Victorious Men of Earth," 
with the alteration of a couplet, would be in the stately 

[74] 



A BELT OF ASTEROIDS 

measures of that grandest and most solemn of our 
minor poesies, '' Death's Final Conquest," 

The glories of our birth and state 
Are shadows, not substantial things. 

while the feeling and theme of the two lyrics are alike, 
and, though each is perfect in itself, they read like 
portions of a divided poem. And Waller's name is 
still popularly connected with '' Go, Lovely Rose," and 
" On a Girdle," out of the whole mass of his songs, 
epistles, epitaphs, and panegyrics, though Professor 
Lowell, in his delightful citation of Dryden, and per- 
haps animated by that scorn of Waller's truckling 
which every true and noble poet must feel, says 
that the latter has lived mainly on the credit of 
a single couplet in the lines closing his '' Divine 
Poesy." 

The late English period, however, is all that I can 
glance at. To mention John Logan is to revive the 
*' Ode to the Cuckoo," yet 'tis by no means certain that 
Logan did not refine this standard poem from the 
crude metal left by his friend Michael Bruce. His 
song on a wild old theme, touched by so many melo- 
dists, " The dowie dens of Yarrow," deserves as long 
a reputation; though of all the Yarrow ballads, that 
by William Hamilton, '' Busk ye, busk ye, my bonnie, 
bonnie bride ! " is the nonpareil. Every one has been 
affected by the simplicity, music, and exquisite pathos 
of Caroline Oliphant, the Baroness Nairn's " Land o' 
the Leal " : 

[75] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

I'm wearin' awa', John, 

Like snow-wreaths in thaw, John; 

I'm wearin' awa' 

To the land o' the leal. 

The author died in 1845, at the ripe age of eighty 
years, and throughout her life wrote poetry, some of 
it humorous, which was quite the fashion in Scotland. 
'' The Laird o' Cockpen " had a wide reading, and is 
excellent of its kind. There was Susanna Blamire, 
the '' Muse of Cumberland," who made sweet use of 
the border dialect in her ballads and songs. '' The 
Siller Crown " is always associated with her name : 

And ye sail walk in silk attire, 

And siller hae to spare. 
Gin ye'll consent to be his bride 

Nor think o' Donald mair. 

There, also, is Sheridan's granddaughter. Lady Duf- 
ferin, who has composed very many lyrics, but is 
known by her most beautiful ballad, " The Irish Emi- 
grant's Lament," sometimes wrongly credited to her 
sister, Mrs. Norton. The words of " I'm Sitting on 
the Stile, Mary ! " and the genuine melody to which 
they are sung, have that about them which will last. 
Did Dennis Florence M'Carthy or John Francis Wal- 
ler write " Dance light, for my heart lies under your 
feet, love " ? I should like to know, for equal author- 
ities ascribe it to one and the other, and it is too grace- 
ful an Irish ballad to go a-begging; 'tis almost as good 
as the song of Irish songs, Allingham's '' Lovely Mary 

[76] 



A BELT OF ASTEROIDS 

Donnelly." Of Thomas Noel's Rhymes and Roun- 
delays, published in London, 1841, the poem all know 
is a strange and grotesque lyric, " The Pauper's 
Drive," with its dreary burden: 

Rattle his bones over the stones ! 

He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns. 

Perhaps ^' Give me the Old," written by R. H. 
Messenger, a Bostonian, from the theme " Old Wine 
to Drink," etc., should have been included with the 
class first under review. The New Yorker, James 
Aldrich, made verses innumerable, but we only speak 
of two little stanzas, entitled " A Death Bed," so 
curiously like and unlike Hood's ^' We watched her 
breathing through the Night." The names of three 
poets — and on whom in the South have fallen their 
mantles? — quickly bring to mind three songs which 
won them most lovers ; remembering the scholar, poet, 
and enthusiast, Richard Henry Wilde, one finds him- 
self murmuring that soft perfection, " My Life is like 
the summer Rose " ; next comes Edward C. Pinkney's 
chivalrous " Health "; "I drink this cup to one made 
up of loveliness alone! " and with mention of Philip 
Pendleton Cooke, all think of " Florence Vane," which, 
however, is a close study after E. A. Poe. The latter 
is himself constantly entitled the author of " The 
Raven," yet, for true poetical qualities, his " Annabel 
Lee," "Haunted Palace," "The City in the Sea," 
and that remarkable dithyrambic fantasy, " The 
Bells," are more valued by the selectest taste. Why 

[77-] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

does every one speak of the late General Morris as 
the writer of " Woodman, Spare that Tree " ? Be- 
cause this lyric, almost as widely known as '' Sweet 
Home," has the simple elements of a song proper, 
and in this respect might not have been so good if 
the author had been a greater poet. I think it deserves 
a corner, opposite the other, in any liberal collection 
of our songs. Hoffman's " Sparkling and Bright " 
had a like trick of catching the public ear. The Rev. 
Ralph Hoyt, who once published a volume of quaint 
and original poems, is known as the author of '' Old," 
and he has been so long silent that it is not wholly 
my fault if he is not reckoned with the list of con- 
temporaries. Two fugitive lyrics, now in my mind, 
may belong rather to the classification first made, 
though why I should here select them, I can hardly 
tell. One is " The Voice of the Grass," 

Here I come creeping, creeping everywhere ! 

by Sarah Roberts, of New Hampshire. The other — 
who is it by ? — " In Summer when the days were 
long." Each was composed by a true poet, and is an 
addition to literature in its unpretending way. 

But to return for a moment to our main purpose. 
The fortunate single-poems, before mentioned, were 
either the spirited efforts of amateurs, or the sole hits 
achieved by the Quinces and Triplets of their day. 
If a person of culture has made, with easy hand, a 
chance success; or, if patient dullards woo our gracious 
Thea until they flatter her into a smile of favor, or 

[78] 



A BELT OF ASTEROIDS 

steal upon an unguarded moment to catch certain 
echoes of her voice; all this is nothing in behalf of 
amateur art — nor are they to be placed on a level with 
the consecrated poets. For the latter can, with cer- 
tainty, again and again, excel the random work of 
those who come not in by the appointed door. A 
large proportion of the minor art of our most ap- 
proved poets is made up of pieces, each of which, if 
the only specimen of its author, might have received 
preservation as an attractive fugitive poem. We need 
not mention the great names of the past, but can 
any doubt that such would be the case with Brown- 
ing's '' Evelyn Hope," and " How they brought the 
good news from Ghent to Aix " ; with Tennyson's 
'' May Queen," '' Bugle Song," '' Come into the Gar- 
den, Maud"; with Longfellow's ''Excelsior"; Low- 
ell's " The Courtin'," and " To a Dandelion " ; Bry- 
ant's ''The Battle-Field"; with those exquisite qua- 
trains by Aldrich, " Ah, sad are they who know not 
love ! " with Boker's " Dirge for Phil Kearny," Win- 
ter's beautiful lyric, " Love's Queen," Taylor's " Be- 
douin Song," and " Daughter of Egypt "; with Swin- 
burne's " If love were what the rose is "; or, indeed, 
with scores of other imaginative and finished speci- 
mens of these and other master-hands? For I have 
mentioned the foregoing at merest hap-hazard, as 
minor productions likely, from one cause or another, 
to have become endeared to the people or the critical 
few, and each for itself to have preserved an author's 
name. 

Hereafter, more than ever, there will be no royal 

[79] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS " 

road to the honors of the poet. It is necessary, in 
this period, that every cabinet picture or sketch should 
show the hand of the master, and be a gem of its kind. 
More is required to make good work distinctive. High 
technical finish is so well understood, that it is again 
asked of the poet, not only that he shall have the art 
of sweet-saying, but that he shall have something to 
say. Mrs. Browning sings of the great Pan, down 
among the river reeds, '' making a poet out of a man "; 
but often I wish some power would make men out of 
plenty of the modern poets. A painter has to look 
through the Old World for his masterpieces, and to 
sit long at the feet of his elders for the secrets of color 
and form; but the versifier's greatest models are at 
hand in every village library, and the contagion which 
the press brings to our doors constantly leads hun- 
dreds to mistake inclination for power, or an imitative 
knowledge of the technique of poetry for a true in- 
spiration. They catch the knack of making such 
verses as only genius could have invented fifty years 
ago, and which then might justly have won them 
laurels. 

Thus no art is so easy as that of poetry; but in 
none is it so difficult to achieve a distinctive individu- 
ality. It is the lowest and highest of arts. In it, 
more than in any other, amateur work is to be dis- 
couraged, as most easily essayed, and as fostering 
dilettanteism and corrupt taste. There is little danger 
of sending away angels unawares. I was in the studio 
of a wise and famous painter, who has learned the 
secrets of the dawn, when a young aspirant came with 

[80] 



A BELT OF ASTEROIDS 

a specimen of his work, and sought counsel as to his 
adoption of the painter's art as a calHng for life. My 
friend looked at the sketch, kindly talked with the 
youth of a painter's struggles and self-denials, and 
of the tide constantly pressing the finest genius back 
from its goal, and so sent his listener away with few 
words of encouragement or hope. " Now," said I, 
'' you know that boy's picture had merit; why did you 
treat him so harshly?" He answered, "If he has 
the right stuff in him, this will make no difference; 
he will paint on, though the ghost of Raphael should 
warn him to give way; and will succeed in his art. If 
he has not, I am doing him the highest benefit by 
keeping from him that ' crown of sorrow ' which is 
inevitable for one who has not clearly discerned the 
true purpose of his life." ^ 

^ Reference may be appreciated by some readers of this es- 
say to Famous Single and Fugitive Poems, edited by Rossiter 
Johnson, published, 1880, by Messrs. Henry Holt & Co., New 
York. — The Editors. 



[81] 



o 



IV 

KEATS ^ 

N the slope of a " peak in Darien," in the shadow 
of the very ridge where stood the Spaniard, 

. . . when with eagle eyes 
He stared at the Pacific, and all his men 
Looked at each other with a wild surmise. 



my fellow-traveller captured a superb blue moth, of a 
species so rare and so difficult to secure that the natives 
sell one at the price of a day's labor. We took the 
beautiful creature with us on our transit, and deli- 
cately leashed it that night to the jalousies of our 
veranda on the plaza of the city of Panama. There, 
far within the old town, a mate was fluttering around 
it at sunrise, — to me a miracle, yet one predicted by 
my friend the naturalist. It is just as safe to predict 
that young poets will chance upon one another, among 
millions; "there's a special providence" in their con- 
junction and forgathering, instinct and circumstance 
join hands to bring this about. The name of Keats 
is set within a circlet of other names, — those of Clarke, 
Reynolds, Hunt, Charles Brown, the artists Haydon 
* The Century Magazine, February, 1884. 

[82] 



KEATS 

and Severn, — each of which is brighter for the fact 
that its owner gave something of his love and help 
to the poet whose name outshines them all. The name 
itself, at first derided as uncouth, has become a portion 
of the loveliness which once he made more lovely; it 
belongs to an ideal now so consecrate that all who 
watched with him, if but for an hour, have some part 
of our affections. Among these, if last not least, 
Severn, who shut out his own fair prospects, relieved 
a comrade's agony and want, accompanied him along 
the edge of a river that each must cross alone, until, 
as sings the idyllist, the eddy seized him, and Daphnis 
went the way of the stream. 

Cowden Clarke, Keats's earliest companion in let- 
ters, son of his head-master at the Enfield school, first 
put Spenser into his hands. At the vital moment, 
when the young poet had begun to plume his wings, 
Clarke also made him known to Leigh Hunt, of all 
men in England the one it behooved him to meet. 
Hunt, whose charming taste was almost genius, had 
become — and largely through his influence upon asso- 
ciates — the promoter of a renaissance; he went to the 
Italian treasure-house, where Chaucer and Shake- 
speare had been before him, and also, like them, dis- 
dained not our natural English tongue and the delight 
of English landscape — ^the greenest idyl upon earth. 
In many ways, since fortunate guidance will save even 
genius years of groping, he shortened the course by 
which Keats found the one thing needful, the key 
to his proper song. When the youth settled dow^n 
for a real effort, he went off by himself, as wx know, 

[83] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

wrote '' Endymion," and outdid his monitor in lush 
and swooning verse. But it was always Hunt who 
unerringly praised the finest, the most original phrases 
of one greater than himself, and took joy in assuring 
him of his birthright. 

Shelley, too, Keats met at this time, — the peer who 
was to sing his dirge and paean. Meanwhile, his own 
heroic instinct, the prescience of a muse " that with 
no middle flight intends to soar," was shown by his 
recognition of the greatest masters as he found them, 
— Chaucer, Spenser, Chapman, Shakespeare, Milton, 
— and his serious study of few besides. One must 
have exemplars and preceptors; let these be of the 
best. Neophytes often are drawn to the imitators of 
imitators, the catch-penny favorites of the hour, and 
this to their own belittlement. The blind still lead 
the blind. Give an aspirant the range of English song, 
see the masters that attract him, and it is not hard 
to cast his horoscope. 

Pity is akin to love, when not too self-conscious of 
good fortune and the wisdom that leads thereto. 
Keats died so young, and so piteously, that some 
writers, to whom his work has yielded profit and 
delight, naively regard him from the superior person's 
critical or moral point of view. Lowell, however, 
pays honor to the " strong sense " underlying his sen- 
sibility. When Mr. Lowell said that " the faults of 
Keats's poetry are obvious enough," he plainly had 
in mind the faults of the youth's early work, — ex- 
travagances from which he freed himself by covering 
them in that sculptured monument, " Endymion," with 

[84] 



KEATS 

divine garlands and countless things of worth that 
beguile us once and again to revisit their tomb. Nor 
can we take him to task for careless rhymes thrown 
off in his correspondence. Of their kind, what juve- 
nile letters are better, and who would not like to receive 
the letters of such a poet at play? Keats is the one 
metrical artist, in his finer productions, quite without 
fault, w^earing by right, not courtesy, the epithet of 
Andrea del Sarto. Rich and various as are the mas- 
terpieces of the language, I make bold to name one of 
our shorter English lyrics that still seems to me, as 
it seemed to me ten years ago, the nearest to perfec- 
tion, the one I would surrender last of all. What 
should this be save the " Ode to a Nightingale," so 
faultless in its varied unity and in the cardinal qual- 
ities of language, melody, and tone? A strain that 
has a dying fall; music wadded to ethereal passion, to 
the yearning that floods all nature, while 

. . . more than ever seems it rich to die, 
To cease upon the midnight with no pain. 

Then what pictures, echoes, immortal imagery and 
phrase! Can a word or passage be changed without 
an injury, and by whom? The ''Ode on a Grecian 
Urn " is a more objective poem, moulded like the cold 
Pastoral it celebrates, radiant with the antique light 
and joy. Could Beauty speak, even thus might she 
declare herself. We term Keats a Grecian, and as- 
suredly the English lad created, in latest-born and 
loveliest semblance, the entire breed of " Olympus'' 
faded hierarchy." But what of '' The Eve of St. 

[85] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

Agnes " ? Is it not the purest mediaeval structure in 
our verse — a romance-poem more faultless, in the 
strict sense of the word, than larger models of earlier 
or later date? In proportion, color, exquisite detail, 
it is comparable to some Gothic hall or chapel of the 
best period; and just as surely "Isabella" is Floren- 
tine, and equally without flaw. These poems are none 
the less charged with high imaginings, Keats being 
one of the few whose imagination is not lessened by 
technical supremacy. The sonnet on Chapman's 
Homer was, in this respect, a foretaste of the large 
utterance to which he afterward attained. " Hype- 
rion," with its Titanic opening and Doric grandeur 
of tone inviolate from first to last, was a work which 
the author, with half his power still in reserve, left 
unfinished, in the loftiest spirit of self-criticism, avow- 
ing that it had too many Miltonic inversions. The 
word " faults " is, in truth, the last to use concerning 
Keats. His limitation was one of horizon, not of 
blemish within its bounds. 

As regards verbal expression, a close test of original 
power, he certainly outranks any poet since Shake- 
speare. Others are poets and something more, or less, 
— reformers, men of the world, or, like Korner and 
Chenier, aglow for heroic action. Keats had but one 
ambition; he was all poet, and I think he would have 
remained so. However possible the grotesque changes 
contrived for Byron and Burns in Hawthorne's fan- 
tastic draft of " P's Correspondence," the romancer 
felt that Keats would never become trans fornied, and 
pictured him as still true to the ideal. Shelley wor- 

[86] 



KEATS 

shipped Goodness and Truth in the Beauty to which 
he vowed that he would dedicate his powers. Of 
Keats, one may say that his genius was Beauty's other 
self. In " Wuthering Heights," Catharine Earnshaw 
avows : *' I am Heathcliff ! He's always, always in 
my mind : not as a pleasure, any more than I am al- 
ways a pleasure to myself, but as my own being." 
And Keats zvas Beauty, with the- affinity and passion 
of soul for soul. 

It is hard to hold him to account for an early death 
from inherited tendency to phthisis, aggravated by 
bleeding at the hands of an old-time surgeon, or for 
the publication, after sixty years, of his turbid love- 
letters to Fanny Brawne, — letters in which, though 
probably the recipient flattered herself otherwise, there 
is less of the real Keats than in the most trivial verse 
he ever wrote. If you would know an artist's true 
self, you must discover it through his art. It was 
deplorable that these poor letters should be brought to 
light; let us at least give them no more than their true 
proportion in our measure of the writer's strength and 
weakness. Mr. Arnold is warranted in contempt for 
those who enjoy the one letter that he quotes, and who 
profess to consider it a " beautiful and characteristic 
production." It reveals, as he asserts, '' complete en- 
ervation," and I own that for the moment Keats 
appears to be " passion's slave." Nevertheless, why 
yield one jot or tittle to the implication that the old 
taunt of Blackwood's is sustained by this letter of a 
" surgeon's apprentice," — ^that anything " under-bred 
and ignoble " can be postulated from even the entire 

[87] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

series of these spasmodic epistles ? A theory that such 
a youth as Keats was " ill brought up " cannot be thus 
deduced; the reverse, all things considered, seems to 
have been the case. Furthermore, it may be that the 
evolution of a poet advances quite as surely through 
experience of the average man's folly and emotion as 
through a class training in reticence, dignity, and self- 
restraint. In the first glow of ambition Keats in- 
scribed " Endymion " to the memory of Chatterton, 
and gladly would have equalled that sleepless soul in 
fate, so were he equal to him in renown. Afterward, 
in his first experience of passion, he yielded to morbid 
sentiment, self-abandonment, the frenzy of a passing 
hour. It is not out of nature that genius, in these 
early crises, should be pitifully sensitive or take stage- 
strides. The training that would forestall this might, 
like Aylmer's process, too well remove a birth-mark. 
We can spare, now and then, a gray head on green 
shoulders, if thereby we gain a poet. Keats was a 
sturdy, gallant boy at school, — as a man, free from 
vices patrician or plebeian, and a gentleman in motive 
and bearing. No unusual precocity of character goes 
with the artistic temperament. It is observed of born 
musicians, who in childhood have mastered instrument 
and counterpoint, and of other phenomenal geniuses, 
that they are not old beyond their years, nor less simple 
and frolicsome than their playmates. But the heyday 
in the blood has always been as critical to poets as the 
''sinister conjunction" was to the youth of the Ara- 
bian tale. Shakespeare, Milton, Burns, Shelley, 
Byron, were not specifically apostles of common sense 

[88] 



KEATS 

in their love-affairs, but their own experience scarcely 
lowered the tone or weakened the vigor of their 
poetry. Keats's ideality was disturbed by the passion 
which came upon him suddenly and late; he clung 
to its object with fiercer longing and anguish as he 
felt both her and life itself slipping away from his 
hold. Everything is extreme in the emotion of a 
poet. Mr. Arnold does justice to his probity and for- 
bearance, to his trust in the canons of art and rigid 
self-measurement by an exacting standard; he surely 
must see, on reflection, that such a man's slavery to 
passion would be a short-lived episode. Before Keats 
could rise again to higher things, his doom confronted 
him. His spirit flew hither and thither, by many 
paths : across each, as in Tourgueneff's prose-poem, 
yawned the open grave, and behind him the witch Fate 
pressed ever more closely. He had prayed " for ten 
years " in which he might overwhelm himself in poesy. 
He was granted a scant five, and made transcendent 
use of them. Had he lived, who can doubt that he 
would have become mature in character as he was 
already in the practise of his art? It is to be noted,' 
as regards form, that one of Shelley's most- consum- 
mate productions was inspired by the works and death 
of Keats. I doubt not that Keats's sensuous and 
matchless verse would have taken on, in time, more 
of the elusive spirituality for which we go to Shelley. 
As it was, he and Wordsworth were the complements 
of each other with their respective gifts, and made the 
way clear for Tennyson and his successors. Im- 
pressed by the supreme art and fresh imagination of 

[89] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

the author of '' Hyperion," not a few are disposed to 
award him a place on the topmost dais where but 
two English poets await his coming, — if not entitled 
there to an equal seat, at least with the right to stand 
beside the thrones as lineal inheritor, the first-born 
prince of the blood. His poetry has been studied with 
delight in this western world for the last half-century. 
One page of it is worth the whole product of the 
" aesthetic " dilettants who most recently have under- 
taken to direct us, as if by privilege of discovery, to 
the fountain-head of modern song. But 

The One remains, the many change and pass. ^ 

This prophesying in the name of an acknowledged 
leader is old as the Christian era. And even the pagan 
Moschus, from whom, and from Bion, Shelley took 
the conception of his starry threnody, declares of a 
dead poet and certain live and unwelcome celebrants : 

" Verily thou all silent wilt be covered in earth, while 
it has pleased the Nymphs that the frog shall always 
sing. Him, though, I would not envy, for he chants no 
beauteous strain." 



[90] 



V 

LANDOR ' 

TF the many lovers of the beautiful, into whose 
-■• hands, we trust, this collection will fall, shall de- 
rive from the study of its gems something of the 
pleasure experienced in their choice and arrangement, 
the editors thus will be a second time rewarded for 
most enjoyable labor. The master-artist, to whose 
exquisite touch these compositions owe their excuse 
for being, possessed beyond his contemporaries the 
liberal faculty which endowed some of the great work- 
men of the past : the double gift upon which the poets, 
sculptors, and painters of the golden age, before the 
era of the specialists, were wont to plume themselves. 
He had the joyous range of Benvenuto Cellini, whom 
the chroniclers describe as " founder, gold-worker, and 
medailleur"; who, in his larger moods, devised and 
cast the Perseus and other massive bronzes which 
still ennoble the Italian city-squares; yet who found 
felicitous moments in which to carve the poniard- 
handles, vaunted by knights and courtiers as their 
rarest treasures, or to design some wonder of a cup, 

^ Introduction to Cameos. Selected from the works of Walter 
Savage Landor by Edmund C. Stedman and Thomas Bailey 
Aldrich. Boston : James R. Osgood & Company, 1873. 

[91] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

or bracelet, or other thing of beauty, for the queen 
or mistress of the monarch who protected him and 
honored his unrivalled art. 

The legend of Walter Savage Landor justly 
might have been Fineness and Strength, since, while 
distinguished by his epic and dramatic powers, and at 
home in the domain of philosophic thought, he had 
also that delicate quality which enriches the smallest 
detail, and changes at will from its grander creations 
to those of subtile and ethereal " perfection. He had 
the strongest touch and the lightest; his vision was 
of the broadest and the most minute. Leigh Hunt 
characterized him by saying that he had never known 
any one of such a vehement nature with so great 
delicacy of imagination, and that he was " like a 
stormy mountain-pine that should produce lilies." In 
this there is something of the universal genius of 
" men entirely great." 

Landor's minor poems, therefore, bear a relation 
to his more extended work similar to that borne by 
Shakespeare's songs and sonnets to his immortal plays. 
Yet they are not songs, because not jubilant with that 
skylark gush of melody which made so musical the 
sunrise of English rhythm. They address themselves 
no less to the eye than to the ear; are the daintiest of 
lyrical idyls, — things to be seen as well as to be heard; 
compact of fortunate imagery, of statuesque con- 
ceptions marvellously cut in verse. Are we not right 
in designating them as Cameos f And from what 
other modern author could a selection of relievos be 
made, so flawless in outline and perfect in classical 

[92] 



LANDOR 
grace, for the delight of both the novice and the 



connoisseur 



So finished are these metrical carvings that the ob- 
server, mindful of the art celare art em, might suppose 
them to be the product of care and elaborate revision. 
But with Landor's lyrics, however it may be with 
those of the poets, it is known that the reverse was the 
case. He was a true improvisator, — and that, too, 
without recourse to the irregular freedom looked for 
in improvisations. The spontaneity of the early song- 
sters, at least, was his; these little poems were the 
overflow of his genius, by means of which he relieved 
himself of a surplusage of passion, exhilaration, or 
scorn; and were thrown off with such ease and skill, 
both natural and acquired, that we are in doubt 
whether most to admire their beauty or the swift pre- 
cision with which they grew to excellence beneath his 
hands. 

Who has not chanced upon some lounging philoso- 
pher, retentive of his boyish or sea- faring skill, mod- 
elling with his penknife a ring or puzzle from a bit 
of wood, — possibly, a tiny basket from a nutshell, — 
while engaged in earnest argument; discoursing, it 
may be, of world-wide topics, and apparently almost 
unconscious of the w^ork so deftly and gracefully re- 
sponding to his artistic design? Just so it was Lan- 
dor's habit while engaged upon his prose masterpieces, 
the Imaginary Co7iversations, the Pentameron, Pericles 
and Aspasia, — or, in poetry, the noble Heleiiics, — 
to fashion at any hour or moment some delicious 
specimen of this cameo-work, without disturbing 

[93] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

the progress of his more intellectual and elevated 
creations. 

One of the first qualities which should impress the 
reader of these verses is the thorough purity and sim- 
plicity of their English idiom. In prose and poetry, 
their author belonged to the school which clings to 
the natural order and genius of the English tongue, 
and in both departments of literature he easily ranked 
with the foremost. Nowadays, when there is so much 
of what is called word-painting, so much straining 
after effect through use of words painfully chosen for 
sound or color, it is difficult to estimate properly the 
limpid, translucent clearness of Landor's verse. It is 
Corinthian rather than Composite, and seems to dis- 
dain any resort to eccentric or meretricious devices. 
Doubtless its maker might have put words together 
as curiously as any imitator of a great poet's youthful 
style; but " doubtless," as Thomas Fuller would say, 
he " never did," however tempted by unlimited power 
of language, and with an exhau^tless vocabulary at his 
control. 

Though graven in the purest English, many of these 
gems reflect the manner of those Latin lyrists, with 
whom their author, in his gownsman days, became so 
familiar, — so imbued with their blithe and delicate 
spirit, that he may dispute with rare old Robert Her- 
rick the title of the British Catullus. His epigrams 
are by turns playful and spleenful, and pointed as 
those of Martial; but among these, and in the light- 
ness of his festive or amatory strains, there often is 
little of that emotion which takes the heart captive. 

[94] 



LAN DOR 

You are not moved to tears, as by the passion of 
Mrs. Browning, the devotion and aspiration of Whit- 
tier, the pathos of Thomas Hood. Many of them are, 
as we have entitled them, just precious Httle works of 
art; to be prized, studied, marvelled over, — like the 
carved and mounted treasures of a virtuoso's collec- 
tion, — for beauty, pure and simple, and the perfection 
of their rhythmical execution. 

Yet even in Tibullus there is nothing sweeter, and 
little more touching and tender in the anthology of 
our own tongue, than the stanzas composed by Landor 
when his personal feelings really were claiming utter- 
ance. As he laid bare his heart, whether in fiery 
youth, or old and lonely as the oak that has outlived 
its forest companions, he never gave voice to an un- 
manly or pitiful complaint. Yet, lion and eagle as 
he was, he was not ashamed of the softest natural 
emotion; it spontaneously broke out in his numbers; 
the glitter of a tear is in many a line; there is a wan- 
dering echo in many a stanza which haunts the mind 
long after. Such is the charm of '' Rose Aylmer," of 
which it may be said that, — although it has happened 
often that some minor lyric has entered the common 
heart, and gained for an author that popular regard 
which greater works have failed to procure him, — 
there hardly is another instance in recent literature 
where eight simple lines have so fascinated poetic and 
sensitive natures. Crabb Robinson recounts of Charles 
Lamb, that, " both tipsy and sober, he is ever mutter- 
ing * Rose Aylmer'"; and Lamb said, in his own 
letter to Landor, " 'Tis for * Rose Aylmer,' which has 

[95] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

a charm I cannot explain. I lived upon it for weeks." 
The spell has been felt by many choice spirits, and 
continues to this day; a letter before us, from one of 
the most refined American essayists, says of Lamb's 
extravagance : '' Living on it for weeks is a daring 
thing to say, — yet it is just what / did." The Roses 
of two later generations were dear to Landor for his 
first love's sake, and, as we have embraced in this 
collection other verses inspired by her beautiful mem- 
ory, it will be seen how loyally and tenderly he clung 
to it throughout the dreams and ventures of a pro- 
longed, impulsive lifetime. 

"Aglae," "Aspasia to Cleone," " Pyrrha," and 
other antiques, are to be found, strung along at in- 
tervals, in Pericles and Aspasia, — that unequalled 
product of classical idealism, written in the most per- 
fect English prose. Indeed, the conception of the 
present volume arose from the statement in a recent 
essay, that a book might be made of the lyrical gems 
with which Landor's prose writings, even, are inter- 
spersed. '* The Maid's Lament" is a ditty put into 
the mouth of the youthful Shakespeare, in that re- 
markable Elizabethan study of the supposed Citation 
of the future dramatist before Sir Thomas Lucy upon 
a charge of deer-stealing. Some of the poet's lighter 
stanzas are winsome for their careless, troubadour 
spirit, — a mood not affected by him, but his sustainer 
to the last; and our readers will not quarrel with us 
for resetting '' The One White Hair," '' Sixteen," 
'' Time to be Wise," familiar as these may be, on the 
pages of the volume before them. 

[96] 



LANDOR 

Speaking of " occasional " verses, Forster rightly 
says, that " the finest examples of such writings are 
often found in men who have also written poetry of 
the highest order." As Landor's trifles often were 
composed for the pleasure of exercising a natural gift, 
their fantasy of compliment or spleen was exagger- 
ated to suit the poet's artistic caprice. He was not 
half so bitter as his epigrams pretended; was only 
*' making believe," like some vieiix moitstache chaffing 
with a group of youngsters. When more in earnest, 
they served him as a safety-vent. One can hear the 
roar of laughter with which his rancor went to the 
winds, as he contemplated the imaginary flight of 
those at whom he aimed his winged shafts. In cer- 
tain amatory verses, he really was more in love with 
his art than with its object. When he needed a 
heroine he took the nearest one, adorned her with 
regal expenditure, and invested her with the attributes 
of his own idea. There was the pretty Countess de 
Molande, the lanthe of his youth; in age, a sprightly 
and buxom Irish widow, with Landor still her de- 
voted friend and cavalier. He used her as a lay- 
figure all his life, and dedicated lyrics to her that might 
have tempted a Vestal. No doubt she had as much 
appreciation of his songs as Lesbia for those of Catul- 
lus. Possibly she exclaimed, with Rosalind, '' I never 
was so berhymed since Pythagoras' time"; yet 
thought no less of her minstrel, for was he not a rich 
and well-born Englishman, as handsome and robust a 
gallant as even an Irish beauty could desire? After 
all, his feeling for her was more than poetic affecta- 

[97] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

tion. There is something Quixotic in the regard of 
most poets for women, and having once determined 
that Dulcinea should be a princess, Landor persuaded 
himself that she was nothing less. Indeed, like Burns, 
he went to the extreme of chivalry with every woman 
he admired, and for the time was sincere in all the 
honors paid to her. How closely these two men, — one 
born in a cottage, the other inheriting an ancient name 
and estate, — were akin in their manly health, their 
free poetic vigor, their courtliness to women, their 
tenderness to children and animals, their sturdy and 
portentous defiance of bigots, charlatans, and snobs! 

Landor's wit, especially in the sprightly rhymes of 
which his later years were prolific, occasionally was 
tinctured with the freedom of his Latin satirists; but 
rather in playful imitation of them than from any 
grossness in his own nature. It was a fault to write, 
and a still greater one to print, such verses ; but it was 
the fault of that time of life when the faculty outstays 
the judgment. Of course, such indecorous trifles drew 
the attention and merciless censure of numberless Phil- 
istines, who chose to ignore, or were unconscious of 
the wisdom, goodness, and beauty of his serious liter- 
ary achievements. In actual life he was a man with- 
out a vice, and whose every error might be traced to 
the infirmity of a most proud and obstreperous temper. 
Correct, temperate, and pure, he found a zest in out- 
door communion with Nature, which maintained his 
inherent vitality to a grand old age. If his foibles 
subjected him to the charge of Paganism, his strength 
broke out in love of liberty, sympathy with the down- 

[98] 



LANDOR 

trodden, devotion to his honored poets and patriots, 
hatred of pretension and superstition. Among minor 
pieces which thus illustrate his character, their brevity 
and finish enable us to select the enduring verses to 
Browning, the lines upon Roland and Corday, and 
the tributes to Miss Mitford and Julius Hare. 

Mrs. Browning declared Landor to be " of all living 
writers the most unconventional in thought and word, 
the most classical, because the freest from mere clas- 
sicalism, the most Greek, because pre-eminently and 
purely English." It seems to us that precisely the 
amount of benefit which a familiarity with the antique 
models can render to a modern poet is discernible 
in the greater portion of our selections. Their clear- 
ness and terseness are of the classic mould, but the 
language, thought, emotion, are Landorian and Eng- 
lish. Of this twofold quality there are no better 
examples in our language than the companion-pieces, 
'' To Youth " and '' To Age." In finish these bear 
comparison with Collins's " Dirge in Cymbeline," and 
in feeling and purpose excel that melodious lyric. In 
respect to their theme, it may be said that no other 
poet has left so many or so beautiful verses inspired 
by the presence and sentiment of Age. Living long 
after he was content to die, he retained to the ninetieth 
year his sweetness of utterance and need for expres- 
sion. It was the voice of Tithonus, whom Aurora had 
loved, thrilling tunefully and loudly after his bodily 
vigor had departed. It is said that poets die young; 
at all events the mass of poetry is ardent with the 
forward-looking hope of Youth; but in Landor's most 

[99] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

felicitous strains he searches the brooding and pathetic 
memory of the past for imaginative suggestion, as 
one who has discovered that all Time is relative, and 
that to the poet who looks before and after there is 
no choice between the beginning and the end of days. 

The reader has perceived that these introductory 
comments are restricted to the lyrical quality of Lan- 
dor's genius, and to its productions, as displayed in the 
following exhibition. Our object having been to com- 
pose the latter solely of those faultless minor lyrics 
which come within the application of its title, of course 
many, and equally admirable, pieces are omitted. 
There is nothing in this volume which, from its 
length, severity, or freedom, will weary or repel the 
holder. Our intention has been to have it pure and 
charming, from the first selection to the end. 

To many, these Cameos will present the gracious- 
ness of long familiar beauty, loveliest because best- 
remembered; to others, possibly, they may come as a 
first introduction to an author who only of late is 
beginning to be widely read, and whose works never 
have been placed fairly within the popular reach. To 
all such we offer this book in propitiation, assuring 
them that they are like wayfarers who have crossed 
the threshold of a royal, world-enriched Museum, and 
are examining a few of the more delicate treasures 
within its cabinets; glancing now at a carven sea- 
shell, and again at a winged head, cut upon agate or 
onyx for the finger of some beauty of the past; while 
around them are lofty walls laden with historical and 
dramatic paintings, — niches filled with statues of 

[100] 



LAN DOR 

heroes, heroines, and " many a fallen old Divinity," — 
and, in extended halls beyond, unique and changeful 
panoramas depicting every country and time. In hope 
that they will be led to look further for themselves, 
we now invite them to examine these sculptured gems ; 
to note the hues of one, the matchless outlines of 
another, and the satisfying grace and repose which 
the hand of the same cunning artist has bestowed 
upon them all. 



[lOl] 



VI 

WILLIAM BLAKE, POET AND PAINTERS 

TF Blake was not a great master, he had in him cer- 
•■■ tain elements that go to the making of one. Often 
these were beyond his own control. One does not 
need to be a painter or a poet to see, in his extraor- 
dinary work, that he frequently was the servant rather 
than the master; that he was swept away, like his own 
Elijah, by the horses and chariot of fire, and that 
when, like Paul, he reached the third heaven — 
whether he was in the body or out of it, he could 
not tell. This was not so at all times. The concep- 
tion and execution of his '' Job " are massive, power- 
ful, sublime, maintained throughout the series. " The 
Marriage of Heaven and Hell " is a wonderful, a 
fearlessly imaginative, production. But much of his 
labor with pen or pencil does not show that union 
of genius with method which declares the master. 
He does not always sit above the thunder; he is 
enrapt, whirled, trembling in the electric vortex of a 
cloud. 

What is this, you say, but to be the more inspired ? 

True, no man ever lived who had, at intervals, a more 

absolute revelation. He was obedient to the heavenly 

^ The Critic, January 15, 1881. 

[102] 



WILLIAM BLAKE, POET AND PAINTER 

vision; but great masters, obeying it, find it in har- 
mony with their own will and occasion. They have, 
moreover, the power to discern between false and 
foolish prophecies — between the monitions from a 
deity, and those from the limbo of dreams, delusions, 
and bewildered souls. 

Did Blake see the apparitions he claimed to see? 
Did the heads of Edward and Wallace and the Man 
that built the Pyramids, rise at his bidding, like the 
phantoms summoned for Macbeth? I have no doubt 
of it. Neither, I think, will painters doubt it; for I 
suspect that they also have such visions, — they who 
are born with the sense that makes visible to the 
inward eye the aspect of forms and faces which they 
have imagined or composed, and with the faculty 
that retains them until the art of reproduction has 
done its service. We, who are not painters, at times 
see visions with our clouded eyes, — one face swiftly 
blotting out another, as if in mockery at our powerless- 
ness to capture and depict them. 

Men like Swedenborg and Blake, sensitive in every 
fibre and exalted by mysticism, accept as direct revela- 
tion the visions which other leaders understand to be 
the conceptions of their own faculty and utilize in the 
practice of their art. 

One of Blake's masterly elements was individuality. 
His drawings are so original as to startle us; they 
seem like pictures from some new-discovered world, 
and require time for our just appreciation of their 
unique beauty, weirdness and power. 

Another element was faith, — unbounded faith in his 

[103] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

religion, his mission, and the way revealed to him. 
To say that he had faith is to say also that he be- 
lieved in himself; for his ecstatic piety and reverence 
and his most glorious visions were the unconscious 
effluence of his own nature. And that a poet or an 
artist should have faith is most vital and essential. 
He cannot be a mere agnostic. The leaders have had 
various beliefs, but each has held fast to his own. 
Take the lowest grade of Shakespeare's convictions: 
he believed in royalty and the divine right of kings. 
His kings, then, are chiefs indeed, hedged with divin- 
ity, and speaking in the kingliest diction of any lan- 
guage or time. If I were asked to name the most 
grievous thing in modern art, I should say it is the 
lack of some kind of faith. Doubt, distrust, the ques- 
tion, "What is the use?" make dim the canvas and 
burden many a lyre. The new faith looks to science 
and reign of law. Very well : these must breed its 
inspiration, as in time they will. But the processes 
of reason are slower than the childlike instincts of an 
early and poetic age. 

Blake had the true gift of expression; he was not 
merely learned, but inventive, in his methods of draw- 
ing, etching, and color. Here, and in his talks con- 
cerning art, he showed power and wisdom enough to 
equip a host of ordinary draughtsmen. He was mad, 
only in the sense that gave the Clown warrant for say- 
ing all Englishmen are mad; only when he left the 
field in which he was thoroughly grounded, for spec- 
ulations in which he was self-trained and half-trained. 
It is useless, however, to wonder what such an one 

[1041 



WILLIAM BLAKE, POET AND PAINTER 

might have been; he was what he was, and as great 
as he could be. There is no gainsaying his marvellous 
and instant imagination. He saw not the sunrise, 
but an innumerable company of the angelic host, cry- 
ing, " Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty! " 
Heaven and Hell are spirits, alike naked and alike 
clothed with beauty, rushing together in eternal love. 
Job and his friends are almost pre-Adamite in mould 
and visage. His daughters are, indeed, they of whom 
we are told, that there were not found others so fair 
in all the land. Jehovah himself came within 
Blake's vision; the dreamer walked, not only with 
sages and archangels and Titans, but wath the very 
God. 

Among his other qualities were a surprisingly deli- 
cate fancy, human tenderness and pity, industry and 
fertility in the extreme. He had ideas of right and 
government, and was grandly impatient of dulness and 
of hypocrisy in life or method. Finally, even his 
faults, and the grotesqueness which repeatedly brings 
his mark below the highest, add to the fascination 
that attends the revival and study of this artist. All 
that I say of his drawings applies in many respects 
to his rhymed and unrhymed verse. But his special 
gift was the draughtsman's. It would not be correct 
to say that he often hesitated with the pen, but never 
with the pencil, since, whether as an artist or as a 
maker of songs and *' prophetic books," his product 
was bold and unstinted; but his grotesque errors are 
found more frequently in his poetry than in his de- 
signs, while his most orio-inal and exquisite range of 

[105 J 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

verse is far below that attained by him in his works 
of outHne and color. 

These are the merest, the most fragmentary im- 
pressions of a man whom some have dismissed with 
a phrase, terming him a sublime madman, and con- 
cerning whom others — ^poets and critics of a subtle 
and poetic type — have written essay upon essay, or 
deemed whole volumes too brief for their glowing 
studies of his genius. If he did not found a school, 
it may almost be said that a modern school has 
founded itself upon the new understanding of his 
modes and purpose. But in copying the external 
qualities of Blake, it does not follow that his self- 
elected pupils are animated by his genius, rapture, 
and undaunted faith. 



[io6] 



VII 

WHITTIER ^ 

TT would be unjust to consider Whittier's genius 
-'' from an academic point of view. British lovers 
of poetry, — except John Bright and others of like 
faith or spirit, — have been slow to comprehend his 
distinctive rank. As a poet he was essentially a 
balladist, with the faults of his qualities; and his 
ballads, in their freedom, naivete, even in their undue 
length, are among our few modern examples of un- 
sophisticated verse. He returned again and again to 
their production, seldom laboring on sonnets and lyrics 
of the Victorian mould. His ear for melody was 
inferior to his sense of time, but that his over-facility 
and structural defects were due less to lack of taste 
than to early habit, Georgian models, disassociation 
from the schools, is indicated by his work as a writer 
of prose. In Margaret Smith's Journal an artistic, 
though suppositive. Colonial style is well maintained. 
Whittier became very sensible of his shortcomings; 
and, when at leisure to devote himself to his art, he 
greatly bettered it, giving much of his later verse all 
the polish that it required. In extended composition, 

^ From the Encyclopcudia Britannica, the Tenth and the 
Eleventh Editions. 

[107] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

as when he followed Longfellow's Tales of a Way- 
side Inn with his own The Tent on the Beach, he often 
failed to rival his graceful brother poet. In American 
balladry he was pre-eminent; such pieces as *' The 
Swan Song of Parson Avery," " Marguerite," '' Bar- 
clay of Ury," " Skipper Ireson's Ride," '' In the ' Old 
South,' " hold their place in literature. It is neces- 
sary above all to consider the relation of a people's 
years of growth and ferment to the song which repre- 
sents them; for in the strains of Whittier, more than 
in those of any other nineteenth-century lyrist, the 
saying of Fletcher of Saltoun, as to the ballads and 
laws of a nation, finds historic illustration. He was 
the national bard of justice, humanity, and reform, 
whose voice went up as a trumpet until the victory 
was won. Its lapses resembled those of Mrs. Brown- 
ing, who was of his own breed in her fervor and 
exaltation. To the last it was uncertain whether a 
poem by Whittier would " turn out a sang " or 
''perhaps turn out a sermon"; if the latter, it had 
deep sincerity and was as close to his soul as the other. 
He began as a liberator, but various causes employed 
his pen; his heart was with the people; he loved a 
worker, and the Songs of Labor convey the zest 
of the artisan and pioneer. From 1832 to 1863 no 
occasion escaped him for inspiring the assailants of 
slavery, or chanting paeans of their martyrdom or 
triumph. No crusade ever had a truer laureate than 
the author of " The Virginia Slave Mother," " The 
Pastoral Letter " — one of his stinging ballads against 
a time-serving Church, " A Sabbath Scene," and 

[108] 



WHITTIER 

" The Slaves of Martinique." '' Randolph of Roa- 
noke " is one of the most pathetic and elevated of 
memorial tributes. " Ichabod " and *' The Lost Oc- 
casion," both evoked by the attitude of Webster, are 
Roman in their condemnation and " wild with all 
regret." 

The green rusticity of Whittier's farm and village 
life imparted a bucolic charm to such lyrics as " In 
School Days," "The Barefoot Boy," ''Telling the 
Bees," " Maud Muller," and " My Schoolmate." His 
idyllic masterpiece is the sustained transcript of win- 
ter scenery and home-life, Snow-Bound, which has 
had no equal except Longfellow's " Evangeline " in 
American favor, but, in fact, nothing of its class since 
" The Cottar's Saturday Night " can justly be com- 
pared with it. Along with the Quaker poet's homing 
sense and passion for liberty of body and soul, religion 
and patriotism are the dominant notes of his song. 
His conception of a citizen's prerogative and duty, as 
set forth in " The Eve of Election," certainly is not 
that of one whose legend is " our country, right or 
wrong." Faith, hope, and boundless charity pervade 
the " Questions of Life," " Invocation," and ^' The 
Two Angels," and are exquisitely blended in " The 
Eternal Goodness," perhaps the most enduring of his 
lyrical poems. " We can do without a Church," he 
wrote in a letter, '' we cannot do without God ; and 
of him we are sure." The inward voice was his in- 
spiration, and of all American poets he was the one 
whose song was most like a prayer. A knightly celi- 
bate, his stainless life, his ardor, caused him to be 

[109] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

termed a Yankee Galahad; a pure and simple heart 
was laid bare to those who loved him in " My Psalm/' 
" My Triumph," and " An Autograph." The spiritual 
habit abated no whit of his inborn sagacity, and it 
is said that in his later years political leaders found 
no shrewder sage with whom to take counsel. When 
the question of primacy among American poets was 
canvassed by a group of the public men of Lincoln's 
time, the vote was for Whittier; he was at least one 
whom they understood, and who expressed their feel- 
ing and convictions. Parkman called him " The poet 
of New England," but as the North and West then 
were charged with the spirit of the New England 
states, the two verdicts were much the same. The 
facts remain that no other poet has sounded more 
native notes, or covered so much of the American 
legendary, and that Whittier's name, among the 
patriotic, clean and true, was one with which to con- 
jure. He was revered by the people cleaving to their 
altars and their fires, and his birthdays were calendared 
as festivals, on which greetings were sent to him by 
young and old. 



[no] 



VIII 

MR. BRYANT'S " THIRTY POEMS '' ^ 

'T^HE pathetic outburst of Cato Major — " It is a 
■^ hard thing, Romans, to render an account before 
the men of a period different from that in which one 
has lived ! " — is a complaint which Mr. Bryant will 
never be constrained to imitate. His period is our 
own. While most of his noonday contemporaries 
have passed into neglect under the test of time, his 
poetry holds its assured position in the affections and 
judgment of the tasteful. It has a perennial charm. 
It is conceived in the abiding spirit of true art, subject 
in structure to the genius of our language, and is there- 
fore not flat, stale, and unprofitable, when the fashion 
of the day, on which charlatans depend, has faded with 
the day itself. 

His metres, and the sequences of his words, are 
those of Collins and Goldsmith and Cowper, and of 
all other English poets who have refused to depart 
from the natural order of English verse. To this 
order successive generations return with ever fresh 
delight, when wearied of the syllabub inventions 
whipped up in obedience to a craving for something 
original or new. And as the metre, so the thought 
^ The Round Table, January i6, 1864. 

[Ill] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

of Mr. Bryant. It is that which was old with the 
ancients, and is young in these later times — the pure 
philosophy of nature's lessons, the reflex of her visible 
forms. 

Nor has Mr. Bryant's muse been restricted in her 
seldom flights to the petty limits of local scenery and 
fact. As befits a poet of this metropolis, his percep- 
tion is catholic and has a broad horizon. Aloof from 
cliques, their influences have not confirmed him in his 
faults, nor led him to insensibly exaggerate the merits 
of his own vicinage and associates. The injurious 
effects of the converse situation painfully impress 
those who observe the self -constituted Mecca of our 
New England school. There, fine minds and noble 
characters have been dwarfed and warped by mutual 
flattery and cohesion. As they grow older, their 
crotchets are more crotchety, their poetry is less origi- 
nal, their philosophy more awry. But when Mr. 
Bryant writes of patriotism, he does not confine the 
splendor of its displays to Lexington and Concord, 
nor to the valor of a single tribe. His " Conqueror " 
is one who overcometh the world. His religion 
smacks of no university creed; and his sympathies are 
unnarrowed by either his political or aesthetic faith. 
Independent of any year or place, his verses should 
commend themselves, so long as the grass grows, and 
the water runs, and the winds breathe through the 
forests of the land in which he writes. If his affec- 
tions have any local limit, it is one no less than his 
native country. For he is peculiarly an American 
poet. 

[112] 



MR. BRYANTS ''THIRTY POEMS" 

In one sense, however, Mr. Bryant has a restricted 
range. There is httls of human action in his pro- 
ductions; they are meditative, not dramatic, and in- 
vite us to observe the physical beauty of nature, rather 
than the clash of mind with mind, the currents of 
heart and heart. Herein they differ widely from the 
tendency of the age. But for lack of passion we are 
compensated by a surcharge of philosophic thought, 
the serene wisdom of a healthful soul discovering 
something far more deeply interfused in '' all that 
we behold from this green earth." 

These Thirty Poems, by their very tranquillity, 
will at first repel those who have been stall-fed on the 
seething excitement of the latest modes, and flattered 
to the top of their bent with the jingling variety of its 
cadences. 

But give them another study, and their simplicity 
will have a most seductive charm. How easy it seems 
to write such natural lines! You would say that 
thoughts so familiar, verses so unadorned, must be 
commonplace. But learn to recognize the master- 
touch. We see bardlings who writhe before the ora- 
cle, striving how not to express themselves. Are their 
ideals pro founder, or only more involved? The an- 
swer is plain. Clear thought makes clear language. 
Who sees brightly paints distinctive forms. When 
one declares he cannot utter his conception, he has not 
fully conceived. The faculty of human expression is 
divinely infinite. Mr. Bryant rarely goes beyond his 
sight and knowledge, and we say that the secret of his 
simplicity is his self-restraint. This is at once the 

[113] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

safeguard of his poetry, of his prose, and of his 
almost blameless life. 

We confess to feeling little of the critic's irreverence 
in reviewing this Nestor of our poets. Though long 
past the age at which his leading compeer now shows 
symptoms of declension, he returns to his first love, 
and has added to his metrical works a collection equal 
to about one-half their previous amount. Among the 
Thirty Poems are a few that have appeared elsewhere, 
but we read the greater portion for the first time. 
There are two entirely new and sustained pieces, each 
longer than any of his earlier works. We have 
also the Fifth Book of Homer's Odyssey, done into 
English blank-verse. The reader will perceive that 
this volume is the most important contribution which 
American poetry has for some years received. 

The book opens with " The Planting of the Apple- 
Tree," now everywhere reprinted from magazine col- 
umns. This exquisite lyric affords an illustration of 
the limit to which Mr. Bryant, as a melodist, is 
subjected. With a purpose evidently to give spirited 
abruptness to the refrain, the last verse of each stanza 
is a foot shorter than its correspondent. This has a 
certain effect, but jars harshly on the even cadence 
of the author's style; and a more facile artist would 
have found a better way to achieve the desired result. 
When Mr. Bryant ventures beyond the established 
metres, it is with uncouthness and an air of doubt. 
He is in unknown waters, and would gladly touch 
firm land; but then, as we have said, he seldom ven- 
tures. The poem in question is followed by the per- 

[114] 



MR. BRYANTS ''THIRTY POEMS" 

fectly beautiful "Snow Shower"; a little further on 
we have " Robert of Lincoln," full of bird music and 
delicate humor; and, toward the middle of the volume, 
the finely imaginative " Song of the Sower " teems 
with the richness of a fruitful theme. These four 
poems, though cast in moulds of the author's own 
devising, are, with the slight exception hitherto noted, 
in forms as well suited to the author's genius, because 
as evenly and nobly balanced, as those of his well- 
remembered " June " and *' The Conqueror's Grave." 
On page 79 we find the only inelegant expression 
of the book: 



Springs eagerly, and faintly sinks, to where 
The mother waters lie. 



If there are any pieces which could have been 
omitted from this collection, they are, " An Invitation 
to the Country," the " Song for New Year's Eve," 
'' The Wind and Stream," '' These Prairies Glow wath 
Flowers," and '' The Mother's Hymn." It seems to 
us that many feebler singers might have printed 
these. Nor do the two poems evoked by the present 
war at all compare with that ringing clarion blast, 
** The Song of Marion's Men," which has stirred the 
pulses of every school-boy in the land, and to which 
no bugle but that of Motherwell could ever make re- 
sponse. 

There are two simple and affluent forms of Eng- 
lish verse in w^hose mastery Mr. Bryant is without 
an American rival. The first is the iambic quatrain, 

[115] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

of which a familiar stanza, " Truth crushed to Earth," 
in ^' The Battle-Field," may be cited as a specimen. 
Perhaps the most finished poem of this volume is the 
" Day-Dream." The poet sits by Posilippo's steep, 
gazing at the bay, and recalling the olden time when 
its sea-nymphs were visible to the clear, believing eye. 
Witness such stanzas as these : 

I sat and watched the eternal flow 

Of those smooth billows toward the shore. 

While quivering lines of light below 
Ran with them on the ocean floor. 

The Nereids rise before his view: 

Then moved their coral lips: a strain, 
Low, sweet, and sorrowful, I heard, 

As if the murmurs of the main 
Were shaped to syllable and word. 

* * * * 

" Earth rears her flowers for us no more ; 
A half-remembered dream are we. 
Unseen we haunt the sunny shore. 
And swim, unmarked, the glassy sea. 
* . * * * 

" Yet sometimes, as in elder days. 
We come before the painter's eye, 
Or fix the sculptor's eager gaze, 
With no profaner witness nigh. 

"And then the hearts of men grow warm 
With praise and wonder, asking where 
The artist saw the perfect form 
He copied forth in lines so fair?" 

[ii6] 



MR. BRYANT'S ''THIRTY POEMS" 

The second of the forms above-named is that blank 
verse of which Mr. Bryant's handhng is always recog- 
nized. Setting aside the abuse of this noble English 
metre, exemplified in Young, Thompson, and a host 
of didactic writers, it is found in four distinct and 
luminous types. First, the Miltonic, in which Latin 
words and sonorous pauses and inversions predomi- 
nate. This no one has satisfactorily written since the 
inventor whose name it bears. Second, the pure He- 
roic, modelled somewhat after the Greek, and largely 
indebted to Saxon words for its antique and epic 
vigor. Tennyson is a living master, and his " Morte 
d' Arthur " and " Idyls of the King " are leading ex- 
amples, of this form. Third, the Shakespearean-Dra- 
matic; and, lastly, the Reflective, of which Words- 
worth had such high control. In the latter form, 
adapted to the poet's serenest and profoundest moods, 
Mr. Bryant has not been excelled. His imprint stamps 
every line which he has thus written. The " Thana- 
topsis " and " Forest Hymn " are embalmed in litera- 
ture. Nor has his hand lost its cunning. In his new 
volume, " A Rain Dream," " The Night Journey of a 
River," and *' The Constellations," are poems which 
none but Bryant could have written, and in his loftiest 
method. They are compact of high imaginings. 
Take, from the first, an impersonation of 



' '■ — the wind of night : 
A lonely wanderer between earth and cloud. 
In the black shadow and the chilly mist. 
Along the streaming mountain side, and through 

[117] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

The dripping woods, and o'er the plashy fields, 
Roaming and sorrowing still, like one who makes 
The journey of life alone, and nowhere meets 
A welcome or a friend, and still goes on 
In darkness. 



The pieces to which we have alluded, as the longest 
in the book, " Sella " and " The Little Children of the 
Snow," as well as the translation from Homer, are 
also in blank verse. The first two, in their pure, 
artistic interest, present a marked contrast to that 
rhythmical essay, '' The Ages," which is the first in 
date and extent, and the least in value, of Mr. Bryant's 
former productions. 

" Sella " occupies thirty-two delicious pages. It is a 
story of 

— the days of old. 
The days when there were goodly marvels yet, 

of a maiden living near a streamlet v/hose current had 
a mystic charm to woo her. She haunted some lake 
or river from morn till night, loving the waters, and 
yearning for a knowledge of the great sea. One day 
a marvellous pair of slippers, inscribed with her name, 
are found upon the streamlet's brink. When she puts 
them on she can fearlessly plunge beneath the current, 
and follow its windings to the ocean, in whose recesses 
she meets, and learns to love, the blissful creatures 
of the deep. She returns to her cottage-home; but as 
time rolls on her absences are frequent and longer. 
At last her brothers resolve to stop such practices, 

[118I 



MR. BRYANTS ''THIRTY POEMS" 

espy the hiding-place of the slippers, steal them, and 
return them to the eager brook. The gods give not 
their favors twice, and Sella was for ever banished 
from her dearer life, but became a benefactress of the 
upper world. When she died, 

A hundred cities mourned her, and her death 
Saddened the pastoral valleys. 

" The Little People of the Snow " is a sweet eclogue, 
wherein Uncle John tells a fairy tale to Alice: a 
story of a little mountain maid who was tempted by 
the snow-elves to roam beyond limits set by her 
parents, and who saw the myriad wonders of the 
crystal world, but at last perished, chilled to death 
with the very hospitality of her colder-blooded com- 
panions. Since Eva's burial, 

— ^never more 
The little people of the snow were seen 
By human eyes, * ^ * ^ 
For a decree went forth to cut them off, 
For ever, from communion with mankind. 

The verse of these two poems is light and graceful, 
melodiously adapted to their themes, and greatly modi- 
fied from Mr. Bryant's reflective style. They are 
imaginative throughout, but especially attractive for 
the rare fancy which sparkles in every line. The 
author's heart seems budding with a greenness which 
it somewhat lacked in the springtime of his life, and 
thus, by natural piety, could we also wish our days 
" bound each to each." 

[119] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

A few comments on his version of the Fifth Odys- 
sey. A new Homeric translation is always of novel 
interest. No rendering has been thoroughly success- 
ful. Chapman's version, though " loud and bold," is 
too often careless and obscure. Pope's flowing coup- 
lets are anything but a translation. Cowper's un- 
rhymed efforts are preferable, but the bard of Olney 
lost all his simplicity, and became turgid and involved, 
laden with those stronger measures than his own. 
Critics vary with regard to the merits of Sotheby, 
Newman, Mumford, and the rest. There is room 
and a welcome for a truly meritorious version of the 
Homeric poems. 

We do not think that a complete translation, after 
the manner of Mr. Bryant, would supply this want. 
In a note, justly censuring the stiff inversions of Cow- 
per, he says: "Homer, of course, wrote in idiomatic 
Greek, and, in order to produce either a true copy 
of the original, or an agreeable poem, should have 
been translated into idiomatic English." True, but 
Homer's idioms are those of the Epic (early Ionic) 
dialect — as far apart, in construction and word-forma- 
tion, from the Attic, or the polished later Ionic, as the 
text of Chaucer is from that of Pope. The poems of 
Homer, however, unlike those of our early English 
bards, are in a measured and exactly finished, though 
antique verse; their faultless art filling every apprecia- 
tive reader with delight, and rendering them patent 
to all time. Now Mr. Bryant has succeeded, first, in 
presenting a literal version of the Greek, and, second, 
in forcing his verse translation to assume the modern 

[120] 



MR. BRYANTS ''THIRTY POEMS" 

English synthesis. We have compared a few passages 
with the original, and are struck with their fidelity. 
Few words are added or omitted, and the sense is 
generally correct. But the very success of the trans- 
lator's second intention has the effect of commonplace. 
Take the opening of the book : 

Aurora, rising from her couch beside 
The famed Tithonus, brought the light of day 
To men and to immortals. Then the gods 
Came to their seats in council. With them came 
High thundering Jupiter, amongst them all 
The mightiest. Pallas, mindful of the past. 
Spoke of Ulysses and his many woes, 
Grieved that he still was with the island nymph. 

This exordium verges on the prosaic. Homer says 
the same thing, and in about the same space ; but the 
stately choice and order of his language lift it to the 
dignity of epic verse. Another instance: the line, 

Ulysses, the sagacious, answered her, 

is a meagre substitute for the resonant and courtly 

Trfv 6^ aTtajxst/Sojxsvo? Ttpoaecprj noXv^xTjri^ ^OdvGaev?. 

Mr. Bryant's version loses the essential quality of rest, 
which makes the antique song carry us ever forward 
without palling to the ear. The genius of the Homeric 
ballad, like that of a skilfully managed fantasia, is to 
return incessantly to the " theme," and, after the long- 

[121] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

est and loftiest flights, by a recurrence to the refrain, 
to prepare the Hstener for another rapture. In the 
monotonous interludes, which always introduce the 
same personage in the same language, there is a just 
scorn of varying light mechanic matters when a noble 
subject is in hand. 

The Olympian hierarchy will not forgive Mr. 
Bryant for converting their high-sounding names into 
Latin equivalents. In fact, that characteristic of his 
style which most unfits it for translation of the Greek 
is its Latinism. It was impossible for the Romans 
to catch and reproduce the Hellenic spirit. We have 
no sympathy with the cant which deprecates the use 
of those Latin words by which our language is most 
enriched; but it is a fact that the Greek is best ex- 
pressed by authors who rely chiefly on the Saxon, and 
that there is a singular harmony between the effects 
of the Greek and Saxon verse. To conclude : Homer 
will never receive an adequate translation; but the 
method which indicates itself as the nearest means 
thereto, is that of the aforesaid pure-Heroic blank- 
verse. The latter is full of Saxon strength, adapting 
itself to the sonorous refrain, and constructed in that 
epic order of words which is as natural to one cen- 
tury as to another. Probably the " Morte d' Arthur " 
of Tennyson, and Matthew Arnold's " Balder Dead," 
are the best specimens of this method in our language. 

With Spanish poetry Mr. Bryant is entirely suc- 
cessful. His verse renders the grave Roman feeling 
of the Castilian muse to our outer and inner senses. 
Every reader will be repaid by a study of that Latin- 

[122] 



MR. BRYANTS ''THIRTY POEMS'' 

esque production, '' The Ruins of Italica "; and '' The 
Lost Bird " (by CaroHna Colorado de Perry) is sug- 
gestive and melodious as the Spanish lyric itself. 

Throughout the volume are evidences of a serene 
and joyous prime, which age cannot wither, nor the 
rust of years corrode. '' The Life that Is," '' A Sick 
Bed," '' The New and the Old," '' The Cloud on the 
Way," are all recognitions of the season to which the 
singer and his life-companions have arrived; but they 
breathe compliance with the sweet law of Nature's 
successions, and are radiant with faith that looks 
beyond the vail. His philosophy, like his poetic art, 
resembles a tranquil river still widening toward the 
close. 

And now, in a brief and merely suggestive review, 
how little fault we have been able to find with these 
Thirty Poems! Their excellences have grown upon 
us; for their author incases himself in proof, and 
is open to few charges, save that of being " fault- 
ily faultless." They have the effect of Kensett's pic- 
tures — cool, rich, dark, satisfying, a welcome relief 
from the feverish midday glare, the shadow of a 
great rock in a weary land. With all this, such a 
burden of rhymes now loads the press, that it is 
doubtful whether, if Mr. Bryant were for the first 
time craving the public suffrage, he would assume a 
central position in the hemicycle of our poets. For 
the unusual, not the noblest, is in vogue. It was 
much for him to have commenced in that fallow-period 
of American literature, when any writer was notice- 
able; and fortunate that his sure excellence thus 

[123] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

reached the foreground, where all pause to catch the 
deep sound of his chanting. To you, who have yet 
your laurels to win, and would fain win them purely, 
what heart-searching years of inappreciation and neg- 
lect! Your task is harder than his. But approach 
the altar with his reverent step; be simple, conscien- 
tious, impassioned, assured of the goal. Thus you, 
he says, may also 

Frame a lay 
That haply may endure from age to age, 
And they who read shall say : 

What witchery hangs upon this poet's page! 
What art is his, the written spells to find 
That sway from mood to mood the willing mind ! 



['24] 



IX 

MR. BRYANT'S '' HOMER " ^ 

TN completion of his Homeric labors, Mr. Bryant 
■*- now gives us the translation of a work which, 
although composed in the very diction of the Iliad, 
varies widely from that poem in feeling, material, and 
theme. The two epics do not differ as " Paradise 
Regained," for instance, differs from " Paradise 
Lost." The Odyssey is correlative to the Iliad, and, 
in its own way, not inferior. The latter is all fire 
and action, portraying superbly barbaric manners and 
glorying in the right of might alone: a succession of 
lyrical passages, thrown together much at random, 
which rehearse the councils and warfare of men and 
gods, and are strong with passion and the noble 
imagery of an heroic age. The Odyssey has that 
unity which the Iliad lacks. Its structural purpose, 
to recount the wanderings of Ulysses, is evenly carried 
through to the appointed end. Manifestly a some- 
what later work, it hints at the repose of civilization, 
and is almost idyllic in tone. After rising to epic 
fury, as in the slaying of the suitors, it hastens, re- 
gardless of anti-climax, to the scenes and dialogue of 
pastoral life. In it we see less of " Olympus' 
* The Atlantic Monthly, May, 1872. 

[125] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

hierarchy " than in the IHad, and more of the nymphs 
and demigods who dwell on earth and haunt the ways 
of men. Otherwise considered, the Odyssey is East- 
ern, almost arabesque; a piece of wonder-lore; a tale 
of enchantments ; a magical journey, involving the real 
and ideal geography of the ancient world. It moves 
from island to island, and from town to town, never 
straying far from the ocean; delighting to visit many 
peoples and to cleave the hoary brine. 

It would seem natural for the poet of our own 
forests and waters to find himself more in sympathy 
with the spirit of the Odyssey; yet, in his translation 
of the Iliad, Mr. Bryant entered, as if endowed with 
new and dramatic inspiration, upon the fervid action 
of the martial song. He now tells us that, executing 
his present task, he has '* certainly missed in the 
Odyssey the fire and vehemence of which " he " was 
so often sensible in the Iliad, and the effect of which 
was to kindle the mind of the translator." We will 
look for compensation to those exquisite descriptive 
passages, which, scattered through the Odyssey, stim- 
ulate the copyist to put forth all his powers. As Mr. 
Bryant's version of the Iliad was greatest where most 
strength and passion were required, so we observe that 
in the selectest portions of the Odyssey he warms up 
to his work, and is never finer than at a critical mo- 
ment. The reader of these volumes will be charmed 
with the perfect grace and beauty of many scenic 
descriptions, where the translator's command of lan- 
guage seems most enlarged, and the measure flows 
with the rhythmic perfection of his original poems. 

[126] 



MR. BRYANTS ''HOMER'' 

Take, for illustration, an extract from the passage in 
the Fifth Book, familiar through the verse of many 
English minstrels, who have not essayed a complete 
reproduction of the Homeric songs : — 

But when he reached that island far away, 

Forth from the dark-blue ocean-swell he stepped 

Upon the sea-beach, walking till he came 

To the vast cave in which the bright-haired nymph 

Made her abode. He found the nymph within ; 

A fire blazed brightly on the hearth, and far 

Was wafted o'er the isle the fragrant smoke 

Of cloven cedar, burning in the flame, 

And cypresswood. {Meanwhile, in her recess, 

She sweetly sang, as busily she threw 

The golden shuttle through the web she wove. 

And all about the grotto alders grew, 

And poplars, and sweet-smelling cypresses. 

In a green forest, high among whose boughs 

Birds of broad wing, wood-owls, and falcons built 

Their nests, and crows, with voices sounding far, 

All haunting for their food the ocean-side, 

A vine, with downy leaves and clustering grapes, 

Crept over all the cavern rock. Four springs 

Poured forth their glittering waters in a row. 

And here and there went wandering side by side. 

Around were meadows of soft green, o'ergrown 

With violets and parsley. 'Twas a spot 

Where even an immortal might awhile 

Linger, and gaze with wonder and delight. 

This is far more literal than the favorite translation 
by Leigh Hunt, and excels all others in ease and choice 
of language. The following extract will show how 
effectively Mr. Bryant substitutes, for the Greek color 

[127] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

and swelling harmony, the gloom and vigor of our 
Saxon tongue : — 

The steady wind 
Swelled out the canvas in the midst ; the ship 
Moved on, the dark sea roaring round her keel, 
As swiftly through the waves she cleft her way. 
And when the rigging of that swift black ship 
Was firmly in its place, they filled their cups 
With wine, and to the ever-living gods 
Poured out libations, most of all to one, 
Jove's blue-eyed daughter. Thus through all that night 
And all the ensuing morn they held their way. 

The general characteristics of Mr. Bryant's Odyssey 
are those which have rendered eminent his translation 
of the Iliad, — fidelity to the text; genuine simplicity 
of thought and style; successful transfusion of the 
heroic spirit; above all, a purity of language which is, 
from first to last, a continual refreshment to the 
healthy-minded reader. The diction is not copious, 
neither — in a modern sense — was that of Homer; and 
there is no lack of minstrels, nowadays, who ransack 
their vocabularies to fill with " words, words," our 
jaded ears. As a presentment of English undefiled, 
the value of this translation is beyond cavil. Indeed, 
a main distinction of its author is that he belongs to 
the natural, abiding school. He does not consider too 
curiously, nor mistake suggestion for imagination ; and 
his style is of that quality which, as vogue after vogue 
has its day, and the world cries out for a new depart- 
ure, may often serve as a standard by which to gauge 
the integrity of our poetic art. 

[128] 



MR. BRYANTS ''HOMER" 

The simplicity of his manner is unaffected. It is 
simplicite, not simplesse, — the distinction between 
which has been illustrated by Professor Arnold in a 
comparison of Wordsworth and Tennyson. There is, 
it seems to us, much that is common to the genius 
of the Homeric poems and that of their present trans- 
lator, — a broad and general w^ay of regarding man 
and nature, a largeness of utterance, and an imagina- 
tion always luminous and sufficient to the theme. 

The office of a translator is now well understood. 
It is, to reproduce literally the matter of his author, 
and to convey the manner and movement to the utmost 
extent permitted by the limitations of his own tongue. 
Until the latter has been accomplished, there is always 
room and a welcome for new effort. Respecting Mr. 
Bryant's Odyssey we can affirm that he has gone 
beyond his predecessors. He has equalled, and gen- 
erally excelled, the literalness of Cowper, and, so far 
as manner is concerned, has achieved a better general 
effect than Chapman, Pope, or Worsley. Yet Wors- 
ley's Spenserian version has many delightful features. 
In view of the romantic nature of the Odyssey, it was 
a happy thought to render it into the graceful mediaeval 
stanza : a verse redolent wath the sensuous enchant- 
ment of a period when half the world was yet un- 
known, when personal adventure and travel were the 
desire of youth and age, and the chosen measure of 
Spenser was the medium of their poetic narration. 
It is slow to pall upon the senses, and Worsley has 
handled it deliciously. But in his Odyssey the matter 
is constantly sacrificed to the translator's art, and 

[129] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

the whole effect is EHzabethan rather than Homeric. 
Nothing can be more clear and fascinating than 
Mr. Bryant's narrative, conveyed in the true epic 
manner with regard to directness and nobility of style. 
In striking passages, whose original beauty is high- 
sounding and polysyllabic, he most frequently obtains 
a corresponding English effect by reliance upon the 
strength of monosyllabic words: — 

For his is the black doom of death, ordained 
By the great gods. 

Hear me yet more : 
When she shall smite thee with her wand, draw forth 
Thy good sword from thy thigh and rush at her 
As if to take her life, and she will crouch 
In fear. 

I hate 
To tell again a tale once fully told. 

But occasionally he uses to advantage the Latinism 
peculiar to his reflective poems. Such lines as Shake- 
speare's, 

The multitudinous seas incarnadine, 

show by what process the twin forces of our English 
tongue are fully brought in play. Verses of this sort, 
formed by the juxtaposition of the numerous Greek 
particles with ringing derivative and compound words, 
make up the body of the Homeric song. Mr. Bryant 
accordingly varies his translation with lines which re- 
mind us of '' Thanatopsis " or " A Forest Hymn " : — 

[130] 



MR. BRYANTS ''HOMER" 

The innumerable nations of the dead. 

That strength and these unconquerable hands. 

And downward plunged the unmanageable rock. 

His paraphrases of the Greek idioms are noticeable 
for English idiomatic purity, so much so that the idea 
of a translation frequently absents itself from the 
reader's mind. While in one respect this is the per- 
fection of such work, in another it is the loss of that 
indefinable charm pertaining to the sense of all rare 
things which are foreign to our own mode and period. 
His self-restraint, also, is carried to the verge of ster- 
ility by the repetition of certain adjectives as the 
equivalents of Greek words varying among them- 
selves. The words '* glorious " and *' sagacious," for 
example, not uncommon in this translation, do not 
always represent the same, or even synonymous ex- 
pressions in the original text. But most of Mr. 
Bryant's epithets and renderings — such as " the large- 
souled Ulysses," '' the unfruitful sea," " passed into 
the Underworld," and his retention of Cowper's noble 
paraphrase of yepaov akioi, " the Ancient of the 
Deep " — give an elevated and highly poetical tone to 
the whole work. The modern translator of Homer 
possesses a great advantage in the establishment of 
the text and the concordance of scholars upon the 
interpretation of obscure passages; but we find evi- 
dence that Mr. Bryant often has looked to the primitive 
meaning of a word, the result being some original and 
felicitous rendering. 

The exquisitely written Preface to this volume con- 

[131] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

tains a forcible argument in defence of the author's 
retention of those Roman names by which the deities 
of Grecian mythology have been popularly known. 
Mr. Bryant's decision is in keeping with the habit of 
his mind, and highly authoritative, yet we trust that 
our regret that it should have been thus given does 
not savor of pedantry. We suspect that book-lovers, 
of the rising generation, are more familiar than he 
conceives them to be with the Hellenic proper names. 
They could not well be otherwise, reading Grote, 
Tennyson, and the Brownings, not to include Swin- 
burne and the younger host of poets at home and 
abroad. And if Lord Derby in England, and Mr. 
Bryant in America, had adopted that nomenclature 
which, after all, is the only truthful one, the transition 
would have been complete, and the existing confusion 
brought to a conclusive end. 

We have paid homage to the excellence of this 
translation, and briefly endeavored to show in what 
its power and beauty consist. It seems eminently 
proper that its author should have adopted blank-verse 
as the measure for his use. The English reader is 
wonted to this verse as the metre for a sustained epic 
poem. Probably in no other, at this stage of our 
poetic art, can the text of Homer be so faithfully ren- 
dered and his manner so nearly reached. It is the 
one, above all others, in which Mr. Bryant, its born 
master, was sure to achieve success. Finally, no 
blank-verse translation, at all commensurate with 
the limits of this stately measure, has hitherto been 
given us. There was a void which needed filling, but it 

[132] 



MR. BRYANTS ''HOMER" 

exists no longer. Had Mr. Tennyson undertaken the 
full translation of Homer, after the manner indicated 
by that magnificent early production, the ^' Morte 
d' Arthur," we are sure that something very fine would 
have been the result. Bryant's verse is noticeably 
different from that of Tennyson. Only in an occa- 
sional passage, like the following, the one reminds us 
of the other: — 

The formidable baldric, on whose band 
Of gold were sculptured marvels, — forms of bears, 
Wild boars, grim lions, battles, skirmishings, 
And death by wounds, and slaughter. 

But Mr. Tennyson himself would be the first now to 
recognize the fact that a great blank-verse translation 
has been written, and that for another there can be 
no well-founded demand. 

A point still remains unsettled, even by the work 
under review. Are we prepared to assert that all has 
been done which can be done to represent Homer to 
the English ear? The question which Mr. Bryant 
put to himself was, not whether the Greek epics could 
be adequately translated, for that can never be, but 
whether the resources of the language afford any 
better medium for their translation than that of heroic 
blank-verse. This he has decided in the negative, 
giving his reasons therefor; and the argument on that 
side is further extended by Mr. Lewis in a brilliant 
review of Bryant's Iliad and the nature of the Homeric 
poems. 

[133] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

Many, with even a superficial knowledge of the 
Greek text, will confess that, while delighted with the 
unequalled merits of this translation, they still are 
conscious of something yet to be achieved. What is 
the one thing wanting? We have intimated that its 
absence is least felt in those elevated passages, the 
fiery glow of which for a time lifts us above con- 
templation of the translator's art. But in the more 
mechanical portions blank-verse cannot of itself, by 
the music and flexibility of its structure, have the 
converse effect of holding us above the level of the 
theme. Here the deficiency is felt. And for this 
reason, amongst others, that in Greek the names of the 
most common objects are imposing and melodious. 
Hence those lines whose poverty of thought is greatest, 
upborne by the long roll of the hexameter, have a 
quality as aristocratic as the grace and dignity of a 
Spanish beggar. Undoubtedly Mr. Bryant has per- 
ceived the weakness of blank-verse in those intercalary 
lines, which are such a feature in Homer, and con- 
stitute a kind of refrain, affording rest at intervals 
along the torrent of the song. In the best lyric and 
epic poetry of all nations a disdain of minor changes 
is observable; but Mr. Bryant, seeing that blank-verse 
does little honor to a purely mechanical office, often 
has varied his translations of such lines, instead of 
following the Homeric method of recurrence to one 
chosen form. The very directness of his syntax, lead- 
ing to the rejection, even, of such inversions as Tenny- 
son's, 

To whom replied King Arthur, much in wrath, 

[134] 



MR. BRYANTS "HOMER" 

has made it almost prosaic in this respect. Such Hnes 
as 

Telemachus, the prudent, thus rejoined 
And then discreet Telemachus replied 
Ulysses, the sagacious, answered her 

are tame substitutes for the courtly and sonorous 
interludes, 

Trjv 6^ av Tt^Xi/^axo? 7r€7tvv/^£vo? avriov tfvda' 

Trjv 6^ avra/xsi^o/Aevo? Ttpoaacprf noXv^xtftii ^OSvffffsv^ • 

and lower the poetical tone of the general translation. 
We feel still more the indefinite shortcomings of blank- 
verse in the paraphrases of those resonant dactylic 
lines, which make up so large a portion of the Iliad 
and Odyssey, and give splendor to the movement of 
whole cantos. We might cite innumerable examples, 
like the following : — 

'H/iO? d^ rfpiyivsia cpavt] poSoSaHtvXo? ^Hgo^. 

But when the Morn, 
The rosy-fingered child of Dawn, looked forth. 

Mrfvio? i^ oXoij^ PXavKajTriSo? ofSpifjLonarprf?, 
Hr^ epiv ^Atp£idr}(ji /<fr' a/x(poripoiffiv i'OrjHSv 

The fatal wrath of her. 
The blue-eyed maid, who claims her birth from Jove. 
'Twas she who kindled strife between the sons 
Of Atreus. 

[135] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

Avrap insi Ttota^oio XiTtev poor ^nueavoio 
Nrjv^y dno 6'' ihsto uvjAa BaXaaar}? evpvTtopoio. 

Now when our bark had left Oceanus 
And entered the great deep. 

All this points to the one deficiency in a blank-verse 
translation, and this, unquestionably, relates to the 
movement. Can a version in our slow and stately 
iambics, which are perfectly adequate to represent the 
dialogue of the Greek dramas, approximate to the 
rhythmic effect of a measure which originally was 
chanted or intoned? The rush of epic song has been 
partially caught by Chapman, Pope, and others, at the 
expense of both matter and style; and it may be owing 
to the pleasure afforded by this quality, that Pope's 
translation has held so long the regard of English 
readers. But only in one instance, that we now recall, 
has modern blank-verse attained to anything like the 
Homeric swiftness. A study of the tournament- 
scene, which closes the Fifth Book of " The Princess," 
will show to what we refer; yet even the splendid 
movement of this passage is unrestful, and like the 
fierce spurt of a racer that can win by a dash, but 
has not the bottom needed for a three-mile heat. 

There are two forms of English verse in which, we 
think, the Homeric rhythmus may be more nearly 
approached. A good objection has been made to our 
rhymed heroic measure, as used by Pope (and by 
Dryden in his Virgil), that it disturbs the force of the 
original by connecting thoughts not meant to be con- 
nected; that it causes a ''balancing of expression in 

[136] 



I 



MR. BRYANTS "HOMER" 

the two lines of which it consists, which is wholly 
foreign to the Homeric style." Professor Hadley 
has suggested that this may be obviated by a return 
to the measure as written by Chaucer, not pausing too 
often at the rhymes, but frequently running the sen- 
tences over, with the caesura varied as in blank-verse. 
This usage, in fact, was revived by Keats and Leigh 
Hunt, and is notable, of late, in William Morris's 
flowing poetry, to which Mr. Hadley refers for illus- 
tration. Chapman translated the Odyssey upon this 
plan, but in a slovenly fashion, not to be compared with 
his other Homeric work. There is room, perhaps, for 
a new translation of Homer into the rhymed Chau- 
cerian verse. 

Lastly, and at the risk of losing the regard of the 
reader who may have gone with us thus far, we have 
a word to say in behalf of that much-abused form of 
verse known as the *' English hexameter " : a measure 
far more out of favor with the critics than with the 
poets or the majority of their readers. Before its 
name even was known in this country to other than 
scholars, Mr. Longfellow's " Evangeline " appeared, 
and found its way to the public heart as no American 
poem of equal length ever had done before. Our 
people made no difficulty in reading it, troubling them- 
selves very little with the strictures of classical re- 
viewers, and it has not yet outlived its original wel- 
come. 

The fact is that, to properly estimate the so-called 
English hexameter, one must, to a certain extent, get 
the Greek and Latin quantities out of his mind. Pro- 

[137] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

fessor Arnold and Mr. Lewis, among the rest, have 
contributed to the discussion on this subject, the one 
for, and the other against, the employment of hex- 
ameter in translation. Neither of them, it seems to us, 
succeeds in looking at the question from an indepen- 
dent point of view. Mr. Arnold would have our hex- 
ameter more spondaic and classical. Mr. Lewis sees 
that it cannot be written classically, but does not abuse 
it much on that account. He says that ''it is peculiar 
among English metres, because it is so very like prose. 
It is less metrical than any form of English verse. 
Blank-verse," he adds, " can stoop to the simplest 
speech without approaching prose." True, but it does 
not always do so. Run together the opening lines of 
Mr. Bryant's Odyssey, which in Greek are made highly 
poetical by the structure and sound, and see if they 
have not a somewhat prosaic effect :— 

" Tell me, O Muse, of that sagacious man who, 
having overthrown the sacred town of Ilium, wan- 
dered far and visited the capitals of many nations, 
learned the customs of their dwellers, and endured 
great suffering on the deep." 

Now where, in Mr. Kingsley's " Andromeda," — a 
fair specimen of English hexameter, with exquisite 
cadences throughout, — can five lines be made to read 
like that? Mr. Bryant has made the most of his 
material; the barrenness is in the verse. 

No master of the natural English hexameter has 
yet arisen who has brought it to the perfection which 
charms both scholars and laymen; no translation of 
Homer has been made which affords any assistance 

[138] 



MR. BRYANTS ''HOMER'' 

to our side of the argument by surpassing the excel- 
lence of Mr. Bryant's work. Asserting, then, that 
he has achieved a triumph in the only direction open 
at this period, we nevertheless venture to predict, that 
a resonant, swift metre will be developed, from ele- 
ments now felt by our best poets to exist, which will 
have six accentual divisions, and hence may be called 
English hexameter verse; that it will partake of the 
quantitative nature of the intoned classical measures 
only through those natural dactyls not uncommon in 
our tongue, and through a resemblance which some 
of our trochees bear to the Greek spondaic feet; that 
it will be so much the more flexible, giving the poet 
liberty to shift his accents and now and then prefix 
redundant syllables; finally, that it often will have the 
billowy roll of the classical hexameter (as we moderns 
read the latter accentually), and by its form will be 
equal to the reproduction of Homer, line for line. 
If Mr. Taylor, who, by argument and practice, has 
proved the value of Form to the translator's w^ork, 
can reach so near his mark in rendering the hundred 
metres of " Faust," surely there is encouragement for 
a future attempt to represent more closely the one 
defiant measure of heroic song. To the point made 
that English is too consonantal for such representation, 
we reply that it is no more consonantal in hexameter 
than in pentameter verse, and that, of the two kinds, 
the former is nearer to the verse of Homer. This 
objection w^ould apply more forcibly to the still harsher 
German; yet we conceive Voss's Iliad to have given 
German readers a truer idea of the original than 

[139] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

any English translation has yet conveyed to our- 
selves. 

Such a metre, then, will be added to our standard 
verse-forms. It will be accepted by poets and critics, 
and the world will read it, arguing no more of dactyls 
and spondees than it now argues of iambics in blank- 
verse. Nor will any new English Homer tread upon 
the renown of Mr. Bryant's crowning work, until the 
English hexameter — with all its compensating quali- 
ties, by which alone we can preserve delicate shades 
of meaning and the epic movement — has been firmly 
established among us, and a great poet, imbued with 
the classical spirit, has become its acknowledged 
master. 

Until then, Mr. Bryant's noble translation has filled 
the literary void. A host of English readers will long 
return to it with admiration and delight. Let us 
revere and cherish the fame of our eldest bard. He 
still remains among us, unchanged and monumental, 
surrounded by the unsettled^ transitional art of the 
later generation, — as some Doric temple remains, in 
a land where grotesque and artificial structures have 
sprung up for a time, — an emblem of the strength of 
a more natural period, teaching the beauty of sim- 
plicity, and the endurance of that which is harmonious 
and true. 



[140] 



X 

STODDARD'S POEMS ^ 

TT^OR some time past our Miltons of the Atlantic 
-*■ coast have been mute, if not inglorious, taking 
silent observation of the new departure indicated by 
the present lyrical vogue. They have shrunk away 
before the outburst of gulch-and-canyon minstrelsy — ■ 
somewhat as high tragedians take to their beds when 
the coming of Ixion is announced; or, it may be, are 
in their respective strongholds, burnishing their arms 
for a victorious return to the tournament of song. 
Meantime the crown has been yielded to our rampant 
knights of the West, who, each bestriding a mustang 
more untamed than his predecessors, have tilted over 
the lists — one or two of them by way of recreation 
from service of another kind. We have heard the 
sound of their publishers' heraldic trumpetings and 
the plaudits of the multitude below the tiers — and on 
the head of each in turn we have seen 

Perfume and flowers fall in showers 
That lightly rain from ladies' hands. 

Thus it ever has been the wide world over. The lists 
are open to all knights, errant or otherwise; and they 
^ The World, New York, November 3, 1871. 

[141] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

who have won old triumphs may be sure that, if they 
hoard their fame too long, the newer aspirant — though 
not, perchance, the nobler — will become the favorite 
of the day. 

Mr. Stoddard is the first of our Eastern poets to 
break the spell of their prolonged reserve. Many will 
choose to regard the title of his new volume as an 
intentional counterpoise to the popular mode, and as 
a pronunciamento of his own estate, fealty, and in- 
spiration. It is derived, however, from a collection 
of those Oriental lyrics, to one of which we never 
listen without desiring to paraphrase the refrain in the 
Arabian Knights and say : " Pray sing us another of 
those love-songs which you know how to sing so well ! " 
These elegant versions from the Persian, Tartar, and 
Chinese poetry, rendered with subtle and delicate 
touch, occupy the closing pages of The Book of the 
East. Taken separately they vary in merit and inter- 
est; but together they form a beautiful rose-garden, 
filled with flowers of both lustrous and sombre hues. 
We are glad to see them here, as they exhale the per- 
fume of their author's earlier work and gracefully 
invite us to an acquaintance with the stronger and more 
elevated poems by which they are preceded. 

Mr. Stoddard holds a place of honor amongst the 
few acknowledged American poets who stand half- 
way between the elder and new generations, and may 
be reckoned as at the prime of his powers. It is some 
fifteen years, we think, since he last made a collection 
of his minor poetry. Many of the pieces in this volume 
have appeared during the interval, and not long ago 

[142] 



STODDARD'S POEMS 

The King's Bell — the most extended and beautiful 
of his narrative productions — was issued by itself, and 
at once found a lasting place in the admiration of 
select lovers of poetry. On the whole, it seems to us 
that Mr. Stoddard has been somewhat careless of 
fame, as indeed a poet living in New York is apt to 
be. In provincial cities, where there is little enough 
to see, desire grows upon us to be seen and known 
of all men; but in the metropolis, where one can see 
so much and be himself so easily lost from public 
sight, a philosophic artist soon realizes that his own 
greater or less renown is of little moment compared 
with the storm and progress of the life about him. 
Once impressed w4th this feeling, his solicitude for 
appreciation is merged in love for art itself, unless, 
forsooth, he be stimulated by some publisher akin to 
that bearded husband of the ballet dancer in Hy- 
perion who says : " I shall run her six nights at 
Munich, and then take her on to Vienna." For a poet 
of true sensibility never can run himself, even with 
a stage name plagiarized from a " grizzly " and a 
stage pair of seven-league top-boots. 

The Songs of Summer, to w^hich we have al- 
luded, was Stoddard's second contribution, in book- 
form, to our metrical literature, and was composed 
of songs and idyls written after he had outgrown the 
undue influence of his early models (albeit these were 
of the best), and his genius had developed its specific 
quality. In fact, quality breathed from every leaf of 
that book, and at this day there is no single volume of 
American poetry to which, as a whole, we recur more 

[143] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

often or with more pleasure. Its beautiful succession 
of lyrics, thrown off in a style thoroughly his own — 
all compact of wild and witching music, full as Shel- 
ley's of sudden cadences and dying falls, and spon- 
taneous as the carols of the Elizabeth songsters — were 
each a work of melodious English art. They so dwelt 
upon the ear as to draw attention from the more ex- 
tended compositions of which they were the overture. 
'' The Abdication of Noman the Elder " is a master- 
piece. " The Fisher and Charon " — a classical produc- 
tion of some length — as an example of noble and sus- 
tained blank-verse has not been excelled, in our way 
of thinking, by any American poem. It is stately, 
Doric, and imaginative to a high degree. 

A book of the East should represent the meridian 
of age, experience, and culture. What may we fairly 
demand from an Eastern poet ? First, the genius that 
should inform a poet of whatever clime or period; 
secondly, a breadth of training and thought, not only 
enabling him to equal the poet of a newer region in 
the latter specialty, but giving him a poly-sided skill 
to excel in many specialties. He must touch life 
through and through and all around — '' best bard be- 
cause the wisest." It is time to estimate by some such 
high test a poet whose home is that portion of this New 
World which, to regions westward, has already become 
the Old.' 

In The Book of the East we accordingly find that 
Stoddard retains his lyrical faculty and technical skill, 
and we also discover that he composes not merely 
from the love of faultless execution, but with the 

[144] 



STODDARD'S POEMS 

thoughtful inspiration of maturity. The book is more 
subjective than his former work. The converse is 
true of many poets, who seem only in youth — when 
the secrets of their emotion are least worth knowing 
— to remember Sidney's injunction, '' Look in thy 
heart and write." 

Stoddard avowedly belongs to the natural, universal 
school. Rejecting the idea that a cisatlantic poet 
should imitate the inventor of corn-stalk architecture, 
and adopt new modes less excellent than those already 
tested, he believes that an artist has all lands, seasons, 
and themes for his material, and may compel all forces 
to be the servants of his craft. Nevertheless his coun- 
try lies near his heart, and in handling patriotic themes 
he chooses the open w^ay and best. Of his perfect 
simplicity as a balladist the publishers seem to be 
aware. ''Red Riding-Hood," ''The Babes in the 
Wood," and " Putnam the Brave," composed at their 
suggestion, delighted young and old alike. In the 
present volume, " The Ballad of Valley Forge," 
" When this Old Flag was New," and that Parnassian 
counterpart to Eastman Johnson's glorious drawing, 
" The Little Drummer," show what genius can accom- 
plish without striving after effect. We have the in- 
spiration of the sibyl without the contortions. It looks 
easy, but try it! Nor can anything be better than 
" The Ballad of Crecy " — as healthy and surging as 
old Drayton's " Agincourt " — upon which, by the way, 
it is somewhat closely modelled. 

Of the poems before us we are least attracted by the 
sentimental though finished studies from life which — 

[145] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

as a kind of sop to Cerberus, we suppose — are made 
to open the volume. They show less of the author's 
specific gift, though one — " After the Funeral " — is 
an exception, with an intense amount of genuine feel- 
ing crowded into its brief lyrical expression. We 
prefer to look further on to the works of graver pur- 
port, which give tone and character to the main body 
of the collection. 

Stoddard's lyrics and madrigals, we have indicated, 
have the rare felicity of being spontaneous as a sky- 
lark's, and at the same time exquisite in delicacy of 
art. Two or three specimens will show that his voice 
has lost none of its sweetness : 

.Wail on, thou bleeding nightingale! 

I join my wail with thine; 
Deplore thy passion for the rose. 
And let me weep for mine ! 

Lament thy rose for seventy days, 

She lives, and may reply ; 
But mine is dead, and I must weep, 

Or break my heart, and die ! 

THE DYING LOVER 

The grass that is under me now 

Will soon be over me, sweet! 
When you walk this way again, 

I shall not hear your feet. 

You may walk this way again. 
And shed your tears like dew; 

They will be no more to me, then, 
Than mine are now to you! 

[146] 



STODDARD'S POEMS \ 

1 

" I am a white falcon, hurrah ! i 

My home is the mountains so high; \ 

But away o'er the lands and the waters, ; 
Wherever I please, I can fly. 

" I wander from city to city, I 

I dart from the wave to the cloud; ; 

And when I am dead I shall slumber, [ 

With my own white wings for a shroud ! " j 



*' I know a little rose, 

And O but I were blest. 
Could I but be the drop of dew 
That lies upon her breast ! 

" But I dare not look so high, 
Nor die a death so sweet; 
It is enough for me to be 
The dust about her feet ! " 

The Horatian touch, that can add a grace to the 
simplest theme, is visible in these dainty couplets : 



TO A FRIEND, WITH A VASE 

Poet, take this little vase, 

From a lover of the race, 

Given to hold — a funeral jar — i 

The ashes of thy loved cigar. 

If for that it seem too fine, ■ 

Fill it to the brim with wine, j 

And drink, in love, to me and mine, 

As I drain to thee and thine. 

Ashes, though, may suit it best, 

(There's a plenty in my breast) ; i 

[147] : 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

Fill it, then, in summer hours 
With the ashes of thy flowers — 
Roses, such as on it blow, 
Or lilies, like its ground of snow. 

The English metrical period, with whose produc- 
tions, so far as manner is concerned, Mr. Stoddard's 
art now seems most in sympathy, is that of the Com- 
monwealth and Restoration — the time of Wither, 
Shirley, and Marvell, whose enduring metres he, 
among contemporary poets, has made distinctively his 
own, by infusing beneath their body a new and mod- 
ern soul. In the pieces for which he chooses these 
forms of expression, he rises above the Fancy which 
lightens his songs, and Imagination — often sombre, but 
sustained and noble — is their dominant force. The 
gravity and stateliness of such measures are suited to 
the themes for which he has selected them. There 
is no better poetry in the book than that written in 
honor of the great who have passed away, and of 
one still among us. Certainly the piece entitled 
" Abraham Lincoln : A Horatian Ode," is the finest 
tribute yet paid to the memory of the Liberator. Its 
monotone is grand throughout : 

Not as when some great Captain falls 
In battle, where his Country calls. 

Beyond the struggling lines 

That push his dread designs. 

* * * * 

Nor as when sink the civic great. 

The safer pillars of the State, 
Whose calm, mature, wise words 
Suppress the need of swords. 

[148] 



STODDARD'S POEMS 

With no such tears as e'er were shed 

Above the noblest of our dead 
Do we to-day deplore 
The Man that is no more. "^ 

Our sorrow hath a wider scope, j 

Too strange for fear, too vast for hope, . 

A wonder, blind and dumb, 

That waits — what is to come ! j 

I 

Not more astounded had we been \ 

If Madness, that dark night, unseen, j 

Had in our chambers crept, j 

And murdered while w^e slept. ! 

We woke to find a mourning earth, j 

Our Lares shivered on the hearth, j 

The roof-tree fallen, all 

That could affright, appall! 

JjC >}C JjC ^ r 

O honest face, which all men knew! \ 

O tender heart, but known to few! ! 

O wonder of the age, ; 

Cut off by tragic rage! i 

\ 
To further illustrate the vigor of Mr. Stoddard's { 

imagination we will quote from another of this class ■ 

of poems. " Adsum," in commemoration of Thack- ; 

eray, is widely known, and we pass it by. The open- j 

ing of the ode written for Shakespeare's birthday is \ 

very striking: i 



She sat in her eternal home 

The sovereign mother of mankind ; 

Before her was the peopled world, 
The hollow night behind. 

[149] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

" Below my feet the thunders break, 
Above my head the stars rejoice ; 
But man, although he babbles much, 
Has never found a voice; 

" Ten thousand years have come and gone. 
And not an hour of any day 
But he has dumbly looked to me 
The things he could not say. 

" It shall be so no more," she said ; 
And then, revolving in her mind, 
She thought, " I will create a child 
Shall speak for all his kind." 

It was the spring-time of the year, 
And lo! where Avon's waters flow. 

The child, her darling, came on earth, 
Three hundred years ago. 

There was no portent in the sky. 
No cry, like Pan's, along the seas ; 

Nor hovered round his baby-mouth 
The swarm of classic bees. 

" Vates Patriae," which, if our memory serves us, 
was read at the Century Club on occasion of Mr, Bry- 
ant completing his 70th year, is remarkable for even- 
ness and nobility of expression. It is as fine as Hal- 
leck's " Burns." 

We are impressed by several poems of an elevated 
character, quite unlike anything before written, though 
involving no new methods of structure. They may 
be studied to advantage by people who confound orig- 

[150] 



STODDARD'S POEMS 

inality with novel or grotesque rhythm. No one but 
Stoddard could have written the solemn and mystical 
" Invocation," or the Holbeinish " Catch " which fol- 
lows it, and each is remarkable in its kind. *' Rome " 
and " Caesar," companion pieces, are no less original in 
conception and execution. But of all the poems one, 
"Why Stand ye Gazing into Heaven?" is the most 
impassioned and yet the most unsatisfying — the voice 
not of an infant, but of an earnest, strong man 

crying in the night, 



And with no language but a cry! 

It is the despair of the modern Lucretius. We 
know too much and too little; have shaken off blind 
superstition and fables new or old, and now stand 
eager for some new revelation yet to come. The cry 
comes from the depths of a resolute heart. When we 
long to say to the poet, " Look upward," he makes 
us feel that he is too self-pitiless to accept comfort 
from that of which his reason knoweth not. 

The solemnity of a large number of these poems is 
very marked. They are not written in a minor key, 
but are both profound and sad — the utterances of a 
chastened spirit who has gone through the period at 
which men like Clough strive to read the problem of 
life, and is content to do his work and leave the rest 
to that Power we do not comprehend. The tone to 
which we refer may be distasteful to some, but there 
are many readers even of modern poetry whose own 
hearts sooner would lead them to the house of mourn- 

[151] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

ing than the house of joy. And nothing but affection 
for the poet can be awakened by the touching pathos 
of the lyrics in which he records his portion of the 
" one great Sorrow " which is " all over the wide, wide 
world." One can see that only the deepest wounds 
could yield such blood-red flowers of pain. In " The 
King's Sentinel " we also observe an exquisite passage 
which no one could have written but a father who had 
lost a darling child. 

Mr. Stoddard's few poetical faults — neglect of syn- 
thetic structure, too great use of the parenthesis, oc- 
casional failure to simply express his thought— are 
rarely noticeable in this collection. And there are 
charming bits of sunshine, showing the natural light- 
ness of the poet's heart, which flash in upon its pages 
here and there. Such is that wise and healthful poem, 
" The Country Life," from which our limits will not 
permit us to quote. We trust that the eminent pub- 
lishers, to whom America has been indebted for ad- 
mirable presentations of her foremost poets, will ere 
long give us in one compact volume the contents of 
this and Mr. Stoddard's earlier collections; nor can 
we refrain from expressing a hope that he himself will 
not suffer his devotion to those more exacting literary 
pursuits, in which he has a practical and scholarly 
eminence, to prevent his composition of some larger 
poetical work which shall be the measure and evidence 
of his full creative power. 

In conclusion we reprint the grand Christmas Hymn, 
which will take its place as a standard portion of our 
choicest national song. 

[152] 



STODDARD'S POEMS 

A CHRISTMAS HYMN TO AMERICA 

Not as of old we keep the day 

Whereon the Prince of Peace was born, 
Whose kingdom comes not ! Let us pray 
It comes this holy morn : 
Let us begin it ; make our brawdings cease, 
And kill the hate that lurks behind the mask of Peace ! 

.Men of the South, if you recall 

The fields your valor w^on in vain, 
Unchecked the manly tears may fall 
Above your heroes slain ! 
Weep ! but remember we had heroes too, 
As sadly dear to us as yours can be to you ! 

Men of the North, w^hose sons and sires, 

Victorious in a hundred fights. 
Gather no more about your fires 
In the long winter nights ; 
If some you loved are missing here and there, 
No household at the South but mourns its vacant chair ! 

By all the blood that has been shed, 

And will be till contentions cease, 
Bury your anger with the dead. 
And be again at peace ! 
So, with your muskets rusting on the wall, 
Your State shall be secure when greatest empires fall ! 



[153] 



XI 

MRS. STODDARD'S NOVELS ^ 

A LL lovers of true literature will consider it both 
-^^ just and fortunate that Mrs. Stoddard's books 
of fiction should now be reproduced in standard li- 
brary form, as a recognition of their place among 
works of fascinating interest and permanent value. 
These tales, their scenes and period, antedate the 
younger generation. Yet they are essentially modern, 
and in keeping with the choicest types of recent fiction. 
To be before one's time, in authorship, is as trying as 
to be born too late. If The Morgesons, Two Men, 
and Temple House, had not been written until 
the tempest of the Civil War was more fully assuaged, 
— if in other respects the season had been ripe, — they 
would have been received by the many, as they were 
by the critical few, for what they verily were — the 
pioneers of something new and real in the novelist's 
art. 

— Of something real, without doubt, for the keynote 
of Tzvo Men is surely that saying of Emerson's 
which precedes it : " Let us treat the men and women 

^A Critical Estimate of Mrs. Stoddard's Novels. Intro- 
duction (revised version) to TWO MEN. Philadelphia: Henry T. 
Coates & Co., 1901. 

[154] 



MRS. STODDARD'S NOVELS 

, . . as if they were real — perhaps they are." By 
the rule of her own nature, Mrs. Stoddard was among 
the first to break away from a prevailing false senti- 
ment, to paint " things seen '' as they are — to suggest 
the unseen as it must be. 

But that her stories of human life, in a downeast 
village port, are " realistic," and were so in the ad- 
verse time of their first appearance, is not their vital 
claim. For they are " romantic," none the less, and 
often impassioned. I find little profit in the jealous 
conflict waged as to the values of the so-called real- 
istic and romantic schools; save that it has brought 
out some good criticism, and that every such warfare 
is stimulating to both sides. Otherwise, it is chiefly 
an expression of one's taste or distaste for certain 
writers, or his opinion that too persistent fashions 
should in their turns give way. Often it is a dispute 
or confusion as to the meaning of a word. For who 
can doubt that art, to be of worth, must never be an 
abject copyist, yet should have its basis in life as it is 
and things as they are, — or that impassioned speech 
and action must be natural even in their intensity? 
Who does not feel that the m.ost daring idealism must 
keep within the possibilities, as we conceive them, of 
nature; that Romance, with the bird of the Danish 
proverb, though soaring high, must seek its food on 
earth? x\way then, like the author of these novels, 
from the mouthing, the stilted talk, the sentimentalism, 
of a pseudo-romantic school. On the other hand, of 
what value is a realistic work, with no strong person- 
ality behind it? The true question is — how much of 

[155] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

invention, imagination, passion, has gone into its mak- 
ing? The method is nothing — nothing — compared 
with the quality of the practitioner. All methods, as 
time and fashion change, become the servants of 
genius : it does great things with all and in spite of any. 
In these days of training and opportunity, moreover, 
there is a notion that most things can be effected by toil 
and culture; whereas, in all art, that which is sig- 
nificant is the result of a special gift — call it what you 
will. It comes with the uncommon touch, the sensitive 
ear and eye, — with that sixth sense, the vision which 
sees " what's under lock and key, man's soul." Mrs. 
Stoddard's novels appeal to us through a quality of 
their own. Written, I think, without much early prac- 
tice, yet with experience of life, their strong original 
style — unmistakable as a human voice — is that of one 
with a gift, and the writer's instinct produces effects 
which a mere artist tries for in vain. Style, insight, 
originality, make books like Tzvo Men and Temple 
House additions not merely to the bulk of reading, 
but to literature itself; as distinct in their kind as 
Wiithering Heights and Margaret, or even as Pere 
Goriot or Richard Fever el. They express an in- 
dividuality: many will like it, others may not, but 
it is here. The latter class must be blind, I think, to 
certain excellences. If we love nature, who sees its 
broad and minute features like this woman, or puts 
them in with more sure and brief touches, — rarely, 
and as a background to her groups and action, and 
through that innate knowledge of their subordinate 
use which belongs to the true dramatic faculty? 

[156] 



MRS. STODDARD'S NOVELS 

The human elements of Two Men, for example, 
seem the more notable for its narrow limits, and for 
the smallness of the stage on which tragedy and com- 
edy are set forth. The personages are sharply out- 
lined; their play of thought and passion is the more 
intense for an atmosphere of repression, the Puritan 
air, tempered by free ocean winds, — breathing which, 
many an Osmond Parke must needs be a rover and 
cosmopolite. Yet one is reminded of Thoreau's avowal 
that he knew the world, for he had travelled many 
years in Concord. Things and manners doubtless have 
changed in " Crest," but these folk are still modern — 
for we read their souls, and their speech bewrayeth 
them. Generations come and go in this short tale: 
its scenes of life, love and death are strangely im- 
pressive. The commonplace is here, but not dwelt 
upon, and slight actions are full of meaning; the 
bustle of Cuth and Elsa at their work, Jason's trick 
of throwing up his hammer and catching it on the 
turn, — these are characteristic and essential. How 
vividly, as the story goes on, each figure lives, moves, 
and has its being: — Sarah, the typical woman of her 
race, whose indomitable negative force keeps all within 
the circle of her narrow will — Cuth and Elsa, the 
family " help," faithful as dogs, reflecting and com- 
menting like a Greek chorus — the winning, selfish, 
sensuous, irresolute Osmond and Parke — the whole- 
some and handsome Theresa — the noble Philippa, 
slow-moulded into perfect womanhood — the provincial 
village-folk — among all, over all, the grim form and 
visage of the heroic carpenter, Jason Auster, the down- 

[IS7] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

east village Lincoln of our tale! Les hommes sont 
rares, and here is one to remember. Such a creation, 
of itself, lifts Two Men quite above the range of 
ordinary novels. The author's dramatic gift is illus- 
trated by the picturesque and tragic episode of the 
quadroon mother and her daughters, the crime of 
Parke Auster, the fate of Charlotte — that beautiful, 
helpless, exotic flower of the tropics, blighted in the 
pitiless North. 

Such a book will bear study. I have read it often, 
each time with a stronger perception of its author's 
individuality. Mrs. Stoddard's other novels, her short 
stories, her fugitive poems, are marked by the same 
qualities — they could be the work of no hand save 
her own. All seek to answer Parke Auster's question : 
" Such revelations come so unexpectedly from those 
who are the nearest to us! There is something ap- 
palling behind the screen of every-day life, counte- 
nance, custom, clothes. What is it?" Their faults, 
moreover, are characteristic. A few more readers, a 
quicker understanding of her work, — there being 
" something of summer even in the hum of insects " — 
would have stimulated her to the frequent labor which 
results in constructive perfection. Yet the wilding 
flavor of these early novels might have been lost in 
the process. Let us take them as they are, for so they 
are worth taking. 



[iS8] 



XII 

MRS. STODDARD'S POEMS ^ 

TN this highly characteristic book of Mrs. Stoddard's 
-*■ verse we have the poetic harvest of a woman's 
lifetime. Such a volume, coming from one whose 
other work long since made its impression, has a sig- 
nificance which sets it apart from the books of verse 
issued at successive intervals by even a justly favorite 
poet. If not a disclosure, it is at least a confirmation, 
of the author's personality. Readers of Mrs. Stod- 
dard's novels and shorter tales have been aware of 
the tense individuality which marks them. Her poetry 
is the more direct expression of the same woman, 
speaking with her own voice, and face to face, instead 
of behind the masks of her personages. If, like a 
holographic will, it were incumbent to prove it entirely 
the writing of the devisor's hand, it would stand the 
test. Here is plainly the author of Two Men, The 
Morgesons, and Temple House. But to read her 
verse is to get a new key to her prose. The often 
evasive thought and circumstance of her fiction become 
interpreted, like the Old World inscriptions read by 
the aid of some bilingual tablet. 

All in all, these are the poems of a reticent but most 
^ New York Daily Tribune, 1895. 

[159] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

original novelist, who at times has found prose inade- 
quate for that self-expression which — in spite of the- 
ories as to the common ground of art — appears more 
essential, certainly more noble and welcome, in the 
case of a strong woman than in that of a strong man. 
Poems like '' The Problem " and '^ In Memoriam " 
show us that thought, of itself, is often so subtle as 
to make speech rhythmical. But the rhythm of verse, 
if useful to thought, is almost indispensable to the 
more elevated states of feeling. Hence it is the glory 
and the charm of woman's verse that it is subjective, 
while a man's self-expression often drops into the 
weakness and effeminacy of the betrayed egotist. 

Doubtless it is because in poetic language alone the 
most dynamic thought and feeling command a voice 
that the world cherishes many poets and tolerates yet 
more of them. The artistic unreality of verse enables 
the most reserved nature to reveal itself without being 
abashed. Among the writings of modern female poets, 
the eccentric half-formed lyrics of Emily Dickinson — 
a kind of intellectual diamond chips — were of interest 
chiefly for their quaint expression of unexpected 
thought. But as much as feeling is deeper than all 
thought, the verse of Mrs. Stoddard is truer poetry, 
not to speak of its saner intellectuality and purpose; 
to which elements the touch of art is added — of an 
art very decided in so various and pathetic a lyric as 
" Christmas Comes Again," but quite exceptional in 
the highest of metrical forms, that of her monodies 
in blank verse. 

Mrs. Stoddard's sixty or seventy pieces, apparently 
[i6o] 



MRS. STODDARD'S POEMS 

the selected verse of many years, are arranged so as 
to show very well the modes and moods of work that 
is the more effective for its compression within a lim- 
ited range. The earlier division conveys its writer's 
memories, and is imbued with that " pathetic fallacy " 
which relates nature and even the decaying structures 
of man to one's own feeling and experience. A mel- 
ancholy bred of the passing away of kindred, and of 
early associations, informs them. Their passion for 
nature is strong and true; and this is quite in keeping 
with the secret of '' The House of Youth " and " The 
House by the Sea." In these, and throughout Mrs. 
Stoddard's verse, a thought is sometimes directly, but 
not didactically, stated, and stays with the reader, 
through an instinctive felicity of word or phrase. In 
" The House of Youth " she says : 

The wind beats at the door, 
But never gets an answer back again, 
The silence is so proud; 

and again, 

Man lives not in the past; 
None but a woman ever comes again 
Back to the '' House of Youth." 

Of November, she says: 

The naked, silent trees have taught me this — 
The loss of beauty is not always loss ! 

The last line has its corollary in a later reference 
to autumn: 

[i6i] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

While watching in thy atmosphere, I see 
The form of beauty changes, not its soul. 

In the poem hereafter given, she speaks of nameless 
plants, " perfect in their hues," 

Perfect in root and branch their plan of life. 
As if the intention of a soul were there. 

There are a few objective, and even dramatic, lyrics 
in the middle of the volume — of which are " On the 
Campagna," and the little pieces, full of sensuous mel- 
ody and color, " A Midsummer Night " and " Mer- 
cedes." These three, and '' The Queen Deposed," have 
rightly been culled by the anthologists, and show that 
Mrs. Stoddard's lyrical quality, much less dominant 
than her husband's — who was a lyrist from his youth 
— is at times spontaneous and compulsive. " On the 
Campagna," the lines on the tomb of Cecilia Metella, 
is the most imaginative of the group — wrought in 
an unrhymed measure, with a stately inscriptional ef- 
fect, and as an objective study displaying the skill and 
simple power that Matthew Arnold strove for and 
twice or thrice attained. As to lighter strains, in a 
vein affected by Owen Meredith, such as " A Few Idle 
Words " and " Vers de Societe," it cannot be said 
that Mrs. Stoddard is fortunate. Her temperament 
is too grave and deep, too genuinely moved, for the 
work of a kind that market writers turn off deftly. 

Where her power lies is, first, as has been intimated, 
in her fusion of the spirit of nature — her familiar 
wherever she has walked — with her own strength of 

[162] 



MRS. STODDARD'S POEMS 

feeling; and, secondly, in the meditations of her blank 
verse, a measure which seems more adapted to her 
genius than that of any other woman of our time. 
Her handling of it is, in fact, tmmistakable ; it is but 
just to say that she is at her best in the stateliest, 
simplest and most difficult form of English verse. 
With its varied pauses, intervals and majestic ca- 
dence, it can be sustained only by the uplifting power 
of coefficient thought and diction. The slightest weak- 
ness at once betrays an incompetency. Nearly a score 
of these poems in blank verse, occupying a third of 
the volume, are of an even standard. The style is 
Mrs. Stoddard's own, differing from that of her hus- 
band — himself a master of the unrhymed pentameter 
— in the caesural method, and through its simpler 
limits of diction. The mental tone is fraught with 
the recognition of the mystery and transitoriness of 
things, but rises to content with a law that must be 
just and beneficent, because it is universal. A single 
poem of the series will show the pathos and beauty of 
her more impassioned utterance, and the discipline 
through which her genius has been matured. 



UNRETURNING 

Now all the flowers that ornament the grass. 
Wherever meadows are and placid brooks. 
Must fall — the " glory of the grass " must fall, 
Year after year I see them sprout and spread — 
The golden, glossy, tossing buttercups. 
The tall, straight daisies and red clover globes, 
The swinging bellwort and the blue-eyed bent, 

[163] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS I 

A 
With nameless plants as perfect in their hues — i 

Perfect in root and branch their plan of life, j 

As if the intention of a soul were there; ] 

I see them flourish as I see them fall ! J 



But he, who once was growing with the grass, 

And blooming with the flowers, my little son, ] 

Fell, withered — dead, nor has revived again! ;■ 

Perfect and lovely, needful to my sight, ;j 

Why comes he not to ornament my days ? J 

The barren fields forget that barrenness. ,i 

'i| 

The soulless earth mates with these soulless things, ! 

Why should I not obtain my recompense? . 

The budding spring should bring, or summer's prime, : 

At least a vision of the vanished child, ^ 

And let his heart commune with mine again, } 

Though in a dream — his life was but a dream; i 

Then might I wait with patient cheerfulness — ] 

That cheerfulness which keeps one's tears unshed, ] 

And blinds the eyes with pain — the passage slow • 

Of other seasons, and be still and cold j 

As the earth is when shrouded in the snow, \ 

Or passive, like it, when the boughs are stripped ! 

In autumn, and the leaves roll everywhere. j 

And he should go again ; for winter's snows, \ 

And autumn's melancholy voice, in winds, j 

In waters, and in woods, belong to me, j 

To me — a faded soul; for, as I said, j 

The sense of all his beauty, sweetness, comes ] 

When blossoms are the sweetest ; when the sea, j 

Sparkling and blue, cries to the sun in joy, ^ 
Or, silent, pale and misty waits the night. 

Till the moon, pushing through the veiling cloud, i 

Hangs naked in its heaving solitude; j 
When feathery pines wave up and down the shore, 

[164] 1 

j 

I 



MRS. STODDARD'S POEMS 

And the vast deep above holds gentle stars, 
And the vast world beneath hides him from me ! 

" A Seaside Idyl," " The Chimney-Swallow's Idyl " 
and " The Visitings of Truth " display Mrs. Stod- 
dard's command of nature's themes. Her shorter 
blank-verse poems have a quality kindred to that of 
Emerson's "Days" and "The Snowstorm"; and of 
her lyrics, the lines entitled " Why " might almost be 
ascribed to the Concord sage. Two other poems, un- 
rhymed — " As One " and " No Answer " — with idyllic 
refrains, are successful in the isometric fashion of the 
Syracusan eclogues, practised also by Tennyson in 
the unrhymed songs of " The Princess " and the 
" Idyls of the King." 

The issue of this volume calls to mind the years in 
which its author and her husband have lived and 
worked together, wedded poets, whose respective ut- 
terances, far removed from interlikeness, are yet in 
touching and absolute accord. Mrs. Stoddard's art, 
to conclude, is that of one who, if she did not " lisp 
in numbers," found the need of them in the joy and 
sorrow of her womanhood, and has kept silent except 
when moved by that stress of feeling which contents 
itself with no petty or ignoble strain. 



[I6J] 



XIII 
STODDARD'S LAST POEM ^ 

THRENODY 

Early or late, come when it will, 

At midnight or at noon, 
Promise of good, or threat of ill, 

Death always comes too soon. 
To the child who is too young to know, 

(Pray heaven he never may!) 

This life of ours is more than play, — 
A debt contracted long ago 

Which he perforce must pay ; 

And the man whose head is gray. 
And sad, is fain to borrow, 
Albeit with added pain and sorrow. 

The comfort of delay ; 

Only let him live to-day — 
There will be time to die to-morrow! 
Now there is not an hour to spare. 

Under the uncertain sky. 
Save to pluck roses for the hair 
Of the loving and the fair. 
And the kisses following these, 
Like a swarming hive of bees 

That soar on high. 
Till, drunken with their own sweet wine. 
They fall and die. 

* Putnam's Monthly and The Critic, October, 1906. 

[166] 



STODDARD'S LAST POEM 

When dear words have all been said 

And bright eyes no longer shine 

(Ah, not thine!) 

Close these weary eyes of mine, 
And bear me to the lonely bed 

Where unhonored I shall lie, 

While the tardy years go by. 

Without question or reply 
From the long- forgotten dead. 

^T^HIS threnody proved to be the swan-song of its 
•^ author — of the old minstrel who in his spring- 
time had made the early volumes of this magazine 
tuneful with a unique succession of ballads, songs, and 
graver poems. If, as Shelley says, " We begin in what 
we end," it is fitting that this poem, his wife's requiem 
and his own, should be enshrined in the first new 
number of a periodical in which his gift attained ma- 
turity and secured for him, notwithstanding the old- 
time rule of anonymity, , a repute that justified his 
adoption of authorship as a profession. 

The lyric now printed for the first time was the 
only one perfected from many broken cadences which 
came to him in the final year of his life. It was com- 
posed while his wife, Elizabeth Stoddard (older than 
himself), was plainly nearing her end. She died in 
her eightieth year, August i, 1902 : the eleventh day 
after the date affixed to the poem. Eleven months 
before, the wedded poets had lost their only son, 
Lorimer — author of poems, pictures, and successful 
dramas, — and Mr. Stoddard had borne up under the 
affliction less stoically than his wife; for a time seem- 
ing dazed, and having illusions that were intensified 

[167] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

by his blindness and partial paralysis. During Mrs. 
Stoddard's fatal illness, his brain teemed with images 
and melodies which he could not get into form. The 
snatches of song, nevertheless, which were taken down 
imperfectly by his attendant, were quite as coherent 
as the thumb-nail sketches of an artist, or the first 
notes of a writer, and if the poet could have renewed 
his power of work but for an interval, beautiful re- 
sults might have come from them. 

As it was, under stress of an unusual excitement 
he ever had but one refuge — ^that of artistic expres- 
sion. From an almost illegible note to me, dated, but 
not then delivered, " Sept. 3, 1902, circa 10 :30," I 
can make out such bits as these : " I have done in the 
rough, since say July 6, some twenty or more poems, 
possibly . . . some good others bad. . . . But, no 
indeed, I think I have been an instrument with which 
unseen hands played their own tunes. I never made 
these things. . . . would be glad if I could. Puck 
and Ober have let loose in 15th Street, Liberty and 
Sag Harbor, and the pipers have been paid." One 
of these poems was this threnody, which seems to 
reveal an intensely poetic renascence of the lyrical qual- 
ity and thought of a noble prime — which so few now 
living can recall to mind. Few indeed survive who 
knew him before the maladies which came upon him 
in middle age so told upon his spirits and bodily 
power. The lyric is given exactly according to a 
version which Mr. Stoddard managed to write for 
me with his own hand, except for some needful punc- 
tuation and indentation. I have resisted advice to 

[168] 



J 



STODDARD'S LAST POEM 

separate its three natural strophes or divisions, feeling 
that his instinct was true in making it a continuous 
strain. 

Of all poets of his time, Stoddard had most dwelt 
upon death, — striking its whole gamut, and not con- 
fining his song to the one topic which Poe declared 
to be above all "the most poetical in the world." 
Within the year his gifted and only surviving son 
had died in the hour of best achievement; his life- 
long companion, the one woman he had loved, was 
hastening to the grave; he confronted desolation, 
which could find " surcease " only through his own 
impending journey to " the hollow vale." The open- 
ing quatrain of the requiem is the sole verse which I 
recall that declares, with the compressed force of 
sternly simple diction, that at every age — even in ex- 
treme old age — " Death always comes too soon." The 
four lines are strong enough to carry the whole poem, 
and the eleven which follow do not lessen their effect. 
In the second division, commencing with " Now there 
is not an hour to spare," there is a poignant and mo- 
mentary loss of hold; the poet's ear and fancy are 
lured by his own melody; his grief is lulled by vague 
yet exquisite wanderings of song. Then, recovering 
as if from a trance, he is brought back to his desola- 
tion, to acceptance of the irreparable and to a sense 
of his own approaching end. He strikes the key of 
hopeless resignation, and from the line " When dear 
words have all been said " to the close maintains it, 
albeit with an old man's mingling echoes of the meas- 
ures which most affected him in youth. In fine, the 

[169] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

opening division of this sweet, sad monody was un- 
mistakably his own — that of the man who always 
faced openly, but without appeal, a relentless fate or 
situation. None but himself could have written this 
lyric; as a whole its effect is synthetic, and indisputa- 
bly that of his swan-song — not of a kind with Tenny- 
son's " Crossing the Bar," or with the " Prospice " 
and " Epilogue " of Browning, but charged with the 
" ruling passion " of a poet who half a century before 
had sung: 

There is but one great sorrow 
All over the wide, wide world. 

Putnam's Monthly, from the first, welcomed the 
young New York poet, and Stoddard well repaid its 
hospitality. He had previously, it is true, written 
much verse; had published and suppressed a booklet, 
and then made up a volume of poems full of promise, 
with open indebtedness to Keats, the idol of his forma- 
tive period — as Shelley was of Bayard Taylor's. His 
contributions to the Monthly, however, were soon rec- 
ognizable through a fresh and individual tone which 
was peculiar to his unstudied songs and sustained 
pieces, if not to his enforced journey work, through 
his after career. The series, which extended from 
March, 1853, to the number for November, 1856, — 
the last issue but one of the magazine, — embraced a 
full score of poems; so many and so good as to con- 
stitute their author, one may say, the laureate, cer- 
tainly the chief minnesinger, of that eminently Amer- 
ican periodical. Doubtless some of his songs were the 

[170] 



STODDARD'S LAST POEM 

more available for their brevity, but they also had the 
true lieder quality, the modern scarcity of which is 
now checking a custom of filling half-pages with the 
stanzas and sonnets at command. The poems, short 
and long, accepted from Stoddard by the Putnam 
editors appear to outnumber those of all the other 
contributors, and to hold their own in choice com- 
panionship. For it was in Putnam's that Longfellow's 
" Two Angels," " The Warden of the Cinque Ports," 
" The Jewish Cemetery at Newport," and that most 
haunting of his lyrics, "My- Lost Youth," first ap- 
peared, not to mention three minor pieces. Bryant 
contributed his " Robert of Lincoln," and Lowell at 
least four characteristic poems; Bayard Taylor as 
many, equally good; Mrs. Stoddard, one of her earli- 
est lyrics. I must not forget to mention the picturesque 
verse of Rose Terry, or the poems of a quaint singer, 
E. W. Ellsworth, which made us impatient of his 
reticence in after years. Aldrich probably was the 
youngest of all those who had the pleasure of seeing 
their measures on the fair pages of the Monthly; in 
his " Legend of Elsinore " can be found the dawning 
charm of his maturer genius and more fastidious art. 
Meanwhile a country boy, still under age, was sur- 
prised when certain stanzas entitled " Amavi," which 
he had mailed to Putnam's at a venture, were printed 
there in October, 1853, ^^^ was glad of the check 
earned by his first offer of a poem to any magazine. 
He still remembers just as vividly the delight given by 
Stoddard's lyrics, from the date of the appearance of 
a tiny avatar of the new mode — the little poem " At 

[171] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

Rest," which made him eagerly read subsequent offer- 
ings by the same unmistakable hand. Among these 
were " The Shadow," and the most often quoted of the 
poet's shorter madrigals, " There are gains for all our 
losses," which bore in Putnam's the title of " Night 
and Morning." Its author's work culminated in Vol. 
VIII, 1856, with " The Fisher and Charon," a verita- 
ble masterpiece of blank-verse, to which many pages 
were not begrudged. I would ask any young writer 
to go back to this heroic idyl, and regard its human 
pathos, its calm imaginative progress, its stately dic- 
tion, and mark what a structure its maker, — just es- 
caped from apprenticeship in an iron-foundry, — built 
upon the stray text of a minor classic, infusing it, by 
intuition as sure as that of Keats, with the very soul 
of the antique. If this had been the handiwork of 
the author of '' Sohrab and Rustum " and " Emped- 
ocles on Etna," or of Lowell — who had essayed the 
theme of " Rhoecus," undaunted by the finer classicism 
of Landor's '' Hamadryad," — it would have vastly im- 
pressed the down-east Areopagus to whose verdict 
alone (as Poe often complained) much deference was 
shown at that stage of our aesthetic development. 

As it was, Ticknor and Fields in 1857 brought out 
an alluring volume. Songs of Summer, containing 
the whole series of Stoddard's Putnam contributions 
and thrice their number of additional poems. This 
collection, with Taylor's Songs of the Orient, Al- 
drich's new volumes, and the poems of others af- 
filiated by instinct or association, were fresh with the 
ardor of a new clan, devoted to poetry for its own 

[173] 



STODDARD'S LAST POEM 

sake, to art and beauty and feeling; and this in no 
spirit of preciosity, but as a departure from — though 
not a revolt against — the moralizing and reformatory 
propaganda, howsoever great in purpose and achieve- 
ment, of the venerated '' elder bards." 



[173] 



XIV 

AUSTIN DOBSON ^ 

AN usher at the drawing-room door serves as a foil 
-^ ^ to the courtly groups beyond him. All his bows 
and flourishes seem commonplace beside the easy grace 
of his betters, if, indeed, the guests vouchsafe him 
a glance as they pass within. Little they care whether 
his legs be cross-gartered. Still, the usher is thought 
to be, in his way, a useful personage. And an intro- 
duction to these Vignettes in Rhyme thus may bear 
a certain fitness, — lest otherwise the collection should 
lack that effect which some prosaic contrast may lend 
to the delicate art of the whole. 

Once acquainted with these pages, the reader will 
find that my comparison is an apt one; that he is in 
good company, and that Mr. Dobson, more than other 
recent poets, seems not only to gather about him a 
select concourse of fine people, but to move at ease 
among them. It is a pleasure to meet these gentlefolk, 
and like a mark of our own rank. Here are gath- 
ered, it is true, those of various periods and manners, 
but all demean themselves with graceful breeding and 
without affectation, and are on good terms with one 
another and v/ith their host. Here are the old noblesse, 

' Introduction to Vignettes in Rhyme, and Other Verses. 
New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1880. 

[174] 



AUSTIN DOBS ON 

the beau sabreur, the gentleman and gentlewoman of 
the old school, and here the youths and maidens of 
to-day, — a choice assemblage, with not a prig, a bore, 
or a vulgarian among them. 

Some of the most attractive portions of this selec- 
tion, therefore, have to do with the quaint people of 
a time gone by, and with the treasures they have be- 
queathed to us. But the author is an artist of the 
present, and his work a product of to-day. Its mod- 
ernism is a constant charm. There are in England 
and France so many lovely relics of a refined, alluring 
age! In England, the canvases of Sir Joshua and 
Gainsborough, the old houses with their souvenirs of 
teacup-times, — brocade and chintz, deftly garnished 
mantels, tapestried and lavendered chambers, box-bor- 
dered lawns and garden-plots. In France, the dark 
hangings and polished floors of stately mirrored rooms 
in turreted chateaux and peaked mansions. Never so 
much as now have the artists availed themselves of 
these materials, and of the riches of galleries and 
museums close at hand. But one looks to the poet to 
catch the sense and soul of these things, the aroma 
that clings about them. The fashions that most readily 
appeal to Mr. Dobson are those which are so far by- 
gone as to be again desired and new. What more 
odious than the mode we have just discarded? What 
so winning as that of a time earlier than our memory, 
and thoroughly good in its time? The movement 
which has given expression to all this, on both sides 
of the ocean, is like a new taste. Mr. Dobson is the 
instinctive and born interpreter of its sentiment, and 

[I7S] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

his Vignettes in Rhyme will be as welcome to us as 
they have been to his own people. The actor's art 
delights us, because we know it is not real, and the 
modern renaissance delights us, because it gives us 
something quite apart from our common humdrum 
life; it is a feeling of to-day that dallies with the frag- 
ments of the past, — of that Past which never is past, 
which merges with the Present, and retains a hold 
upon our works of every-day use and beauty. 

I write first of Mr. Dobson's old-time sentiment, 
because it is so definite and effective, but his muse is 
not restricted to a single range. Before. looking far- 
ther, let us see who is this artist that has filled the 
vacant niche, and whose verse shows at once the 
strength and fineness that make it rank with the se- 
lectest poetry of our day. 

Not unlike others who live at will in an ideal world, 
Austin Dobson is as modest and unassuming a person 
as one often meets. Just a poet, scholar and gentle- 
man, the artist-side of whose nature compensates him 
for any lack of adventure in his daily work and walk. 
As is the case with many London authors, an office 
in the Civil Service has supplied him with an honora- 
ble certainty of livelihood and left his heart at ease for 
song. He was born in 1840, and has been a govern- 
ment-clerk for twenty-two years. Singularly enough, 
he did not begin to write poetry till he was twenty- 
five years of age, and the first collection of his 
Vignettes was not made until 1874. From the 
outset he took the public taste with the delicate sense 
and humor of his lyrics, no less than by their finish 

[176] 



AUSTIN DOBS ON 

and ideality. We reasonably may surmise that years 
of growth, study, observation, lay behind this good 
fortune. 

My own attention, I remember, first was drawn to 
his work by the neatest and brightest of society-verse, 
composed in a novel style, quite unlike that of Praed, 
Locker, or his earlier predecessors. I have elsewhere 
described poems of this class as " those patrician 
rhymes, which, for want of an English equivalent, are 
termed vers de societe. . . . This is pervaded by an 
indefinable grace that elevates it to the region of poetic 
art, and owing to which the lightest ballads of Suckling 
and Waller are current to this day. In fine, the true 
kind is marked by humor, by spontaneity, joined with 
extreme elegance of finish, by the quality we call 
breeding, — above all, by lightness of touch." All of 
these essentials were present in '' Tu Quoque," " An 
Autumn Idyll," and in other pieces which at once 
brought Mr. Dobson into favor. Some of them are 
so witty and elegant, surrounded by so fine an atmos- 
phere, and withal so true to the feeling and scenery 
of his own island, as to make him seem like a modern 
Horace or Theocritus, or like both in one. He is not 
the first poet that has been called an English Horace, 
but few have better merited the title. He draws his 
Englishmen as Horace drew his town and country 
friends. It seems to me that he is the sketcher to 
whom Thackeray would take a liking. Since the De 
Floracs, we have had no such French people as 
L'Etoile and Monsieur Vieuxbois; since Esmond and 
his times, no such people of the old England have 

[177] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

come to life again as Mr. Dobson's '' Gentleman " 
and " Gentlewoman," his " Dorothy," or even that 
knight of the road, whose untimely taking-off is re- 
hearsed in " The Ballad of * Beau Brocade.' " 

Our debonair poet elevates taste and feeling to the 
pitch of imagination. He yields himself to the spell 
of brooding memories and associations : 

We shut our hearts up, now-a-days, 
Like some old music-box that plays 
Unfashionable airs that raise 

Derisive pity; 
Alas, — a nothing starts the spring: 
And lo, the sentimental thing 
At once commences, quavering 

Its lover's ditty. 

His pathos and tenderness appear, too, in more serious 
pieces. There are kind touches in " The Child-Mu- 
sician," " The Cradle," and " A Nightingale in 
Kensington Gardens." Mr. Brander Matthews, one 
of our own most agreeable writers, justly lays stress 
upon Dobson's perfect absorption in his immediate 
theme, his art of shutting out from a poem everything 
foreign to its needs. How purely Greek the image 
of Autonoe ! How minute the picture of " An Old 
Fish-Pond," and what shrewd wisdom ! What human 
nature in " A Dead Letter," one of my favorite pieces, 
— and how perfect its reproduction of the ancestral 
mode ! With all his regard for '' values," the poet 
never goes to the pseudo-aesthetic extreme; indeed, he 
is the first to poke fun at it, and seems quite free from 
certain affectations of modern verse. His English is 

[178] 



AUSTIN DOBS ON 

pure and simple, and the natural finish of his poetry 
shows for itself. I doubt if there is another collection 
of lyrics by an English singer more devoid of blem- 
ishes, more difficult to amend by the striking-out or 
change of words and measures. Mr. Aldrich has sug- 
gested that i-t may well be compared, in this respect, 
to the French of such an artist as Theophile Gautier, 
— the lesson of whose L'Art, as will be seen from 
his own crystalline poem in imitation, Mr. Dobson 
long ago took to heart. 

His lyrical studies and dialogues upon French 
themes of the Eighteenth Century are full of poetic 
realism. In " Une Marquise," and in " The Story of 
Rosina," — a sustained piece which shows the higher 
range of its author's genius, — the presiding beauty, 
and the artist of a time and a region 

Wherein most things went naked, save the Truth, 

are made known to us more truly than they dared to 
know themselves. For dainty workmanship, and com- 
prehension of the spirit of an age, read " The Meta- 
morphosis," and its sequel, '' The Song out of Sea- 
son." What other poet could have written these, or 
" Good-night, Babette ! " — which contains the Angelus 
song, whose loveliness I scarcely realized until Mr. 
Aldrich printed it by itself, a gem taken from its set- 
ting. And I know not, since reading '' The Cure's 
Progress," where else to find so attractive an ideal of 
the goodness, quaintness, sweetness, of the typical Pere 
on his journey down the street of his little town. The 
town itself is depicted, in a few stanzas, as plainly as 

[179] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

" Our Village " in the whole series of Miss Mitford's 
classic sketches. 

Mr. Dobson escapes the restrictions of many 
writers of elegant verse by his refreshing variety. In 
his lightest work he is a fine poet at play ; not a weak- 
ling, with one pretty gift, doing the best thing in his 
power. He is entitled to the credit, whatever that 
may be, of having been among the first to really bring 
into fashion the present use of old French stanzaic 
and rhythmic forms. In view of the speed wherewith 
these have been adopted and played upon by poets and 
parodists without number, I am not sure whether to 
thank him or to condole with him. We must acknowl- 
edge that English poetry, like the language, is eclectic, 
deriving its riches from many sources. Its lyrical 
score, which long has been too monotonous, doubtless 
will gain something from the revival of these con- 
tinental forms. Only those suited to the genius of our 
song will come into permanent use. If any readers are 
as yet unacquainted with the nature and varieties of 
these old-new forms, they can find the best exposition 
of them in Mr. Edmund Gosse's '' Plea for Certain 
Exotic Forms of Verse." ^ The specimens of the 
Rondel, the Rondeau, the Triolet, the Villanelle, the 
Ballade, the Chant Royal, which he cites from the 
works of Swinburne, Lang, Dobson, and those of his 
own sweet and learned muse, are excellently done. 
Nearer home, we have Mr. Matthews's analysis ^ of 
Mr. Dobson's experiments in all these forms of verse, 

^ Cornhill Magazine, July, 1877. 
^Appleton's Journal, June, 1878. 

[180] 



AUSTIN DOBS ON 

and a farther description on my part is rendered un- 
necessary. 

Most of the poems of this class in the following 
pages first were brought together systematically in 
Dobson's Proverbs in Porcelain, 1877, although all 
of their modes, except the Chant Royal and the Vil- 
lanelle, can be found in the relics of early English 
poetry, — some even in the verse of Gower and 
Chaucer. My own creed is that the chief question is 
not what novelty tempts us to the show, but wdiether 
the show be a good one, — and Mr. Dobson pleasantly 
avows a kindred belief. Some of these exotic forms 
seem to be handled as cleverly by him in English, as 
in French by De Banville. The villanelle " For a Copy 
of Theocritus," is like a necklace of beaten antique 
gold. His rondeaux '' To Ethel " and '' When Finis 
Comes," have a tricksy spirit, a winged and subtle 
perfection. Their rules seem peculiarly suited to ex- 
periments in translation from Horace. At all events, 
I do not recall any paraphrases of '' O Fons Ban- 
dusise " and '' Vixi Puellis " more satisfactory in form 
and flavor than those which j\Ir. Dobson gives us. 

Reviewing these Vignettes in Rhyme and Proverbs 
in Porcelain, I have felt like one who has the 
freedom of a virtuoso's collection, — who handles 
unique and precious things, fearing that his clumsiness 
may leave a blemish or in some way cost him dear. 
Artist and poet at once, Mr. Dobson reminds me of 
Francia, who " loved to sign his paintings ' Aurifex,' 
and on his trinkets inscribed the word ' Pictor,' " and 
I have an impression that rarely of late has an English 

[i8i] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

singer offered us more charming portraits, purer 
touches of nature, more picturesque ghmpses of a 
manor which he holds in fee. It is hard to define his 
limitations, for he has not yet gone beyond them; yet 
I shall not be surprised if his future career shall prove 
them to be outside the " liberties " which even a 
friendly critic might assign to him. 



[182] 



XV 
EUGENE FIELD 

" ALAS, POOR YORICK ! " ^ 

T N paying a tribute to the mingled mirth and tender- 
-■■ ness of Eugene Field — the poet of whose going 
the West may say, " He took our daylight with him " 
— one of his fellow journalists has written that he was 
a jester, but not of the kind that Shakespeare drew 
in Yorick. He was not only, — so the writer implied, 
— the maker of jibes and fantastic devices, but the 
bard of friendship and affection, of melodious lyrical 
conceits ; he was the laureate of children — dear for his 
''Wynken, Blynken and Nod" and '^ Little Boy 
Blue"; the scholarly book-lover, withal, who relished 
and paraphrased his Horace, who wrote with delight 
a quaint archaic English of his special devising; who 
collected rare books, and brought out his own Little 
Books of Western Verse and ProHtahle Tales in 
high-priced limited editions, with broad margins of 
paper that moths and rust do not corrupt, but which 
tempts bibliomaniacs to break through and steal. 

* Introduction to The Holy Cross, and Other Tales. New 
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1901. [Originally contributed to 
the Souvenir Book of the New York Hebrew Fair, December, 
1895-] 

[183] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

For my own part, I would select Yorick as the very 
forecast, in imaginative literature, of our various Eu- 
gene. Surely Shakespeare conceived the '' mad rogue " 
of Elsinore as made up of grave and gay, of wit and 
gentleness, and not as a mere clown or '' jig maker." 
It is true that when Field put on his cap and bells, 
he too was '' wont to set the table on a roar," as the 
feasters at a hundred tables, from " Casey's Table 
d'Hote " to the banquets of the opulent East, now rise 
to testify. But Shakespeare plainly reveals, concern- 
ing Yorick, that mirth was not his sole attribute, — 
that his motley cpvered the sweetest nature and the 
tenderest heart. It could be no otherwise with one 
who loved and comprehended childhood and whom 
the children loved. And what does Hamlet say? — 
" He hath borne me upon his back a thousand times 
. . . Here hung those lips that I have kissed I 
know not how oft ! " Of what is he thinking but of 
his boyhood, before doubts and contemplation wrapped 
him in the shadow, and when in his young grief or 
frolic the gentle Yorick, with his jest, his " excellent 
fancy," and his songs and gambols, was his comrade ? 

Of all moderns, then, here or in the old world, 
Eugene Field seems to be most like the survival, or 
revival, of the ideal jester of knightly times; as if 
Yorick himself were incarnated, or as if a superior 
bearer of the bauble at the court of Italy, or of 
France, or of English King Hal, had come to life 
again — as much out of time as Twain's Yankee at the 
Court of Arthur; but not out of place, — for he fitted 
himself as aptly to his folk and region as Puck to the 

[184] 



EUGENE FIELD 

fays and mortals of a wood near Athens. In the days 
of divine sovereignty, the jester, we see, was by all 
odds the wise man of the palace; the real fools were 
those he made his butt — ^the foppish pages, the obsequi- 
ous courtiers, the swaggering guardsmen, the insolent 
nobles, and not seldom majesty itself. And thus it is 
that painters and romancers have loved to draw him. 
Who would not rather be Yorick than Osric, or Touch- 
stone than Le Beau, or even poor Bertuccio than one 
of his brutal mockers? Was not the redoubtable 
Chicot, with his sword and brains, the true ruler of 
France? To come to the jesters of history — which is 
so much less real than fiction — what laurels are greener 
than those of Triboulet, and Will Somers, and John 
Heywood — dramatist and master of the king's merry 
Interludes? Their shafts were feathered with mirth 
and song, but pointed with wisdom, and well might 
old John Trussell say '' That it often happens that 
wise counsel is more sweetly followed when it is tem- 
pered with folly, and earnest is the less offensive if it be 
delivered in jest." 

Yes, Field " caught on " to his time — a complex 
American, with the obstreperous hizarrerie of the fron- 
tier and the artistic delicacy of our oldest culture 
always at odds within him — but he was, above all, 
a child of nature, a frolic incarnate, and just as he 
would have been in any time or country. Fortune had 
given him that unforgettable mummer's face, — that 
clean-cut, mobile visage, — that animated natural 
mask! No one else had so deep and rich a voice for 
the rendering of the music and pathos of a poet's lines, 

[i8s] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

and no actor ever managed both face and voice better 
than he in delivering his own verses merry or sad. 
One night, he was seen among the audience at " Uncut 
Leaves," and was instantly requested to do something 
towards the evening's entertainment. As he was not 
in evening dress, he refused to take the platform, but 
stood up in the lank length of an ulster, from his cor- 
ner seat, and recited " Dibdin's Ghost " and " Two 
Opinions " in a manner which blighted the chances of 
the readers that came after him. It is true that no 
clown ever equalled the number and lawlessness of his 
practical jokes. Above all, every friend that he had 
— except the Dean of his profession, for whom he did 
exhibit unbounded and filial reverence — was soon or 
late a victim of his whimsicality, or else justly dis- 
trusted the measure of Field's regard for him. Nor 
was the friendship perfected until one bestirred himself 
to pay Eugene back in kind. As to this, I am only one 
of scores now speaking from personal experience. 
There seemed to be no doubt in his mind that the victim 
of his fun, even when it outraged common sensibili- 
ties, must enjoy it as much as he. Who but Eugene, 
after being the welcome guest, at a European capital, 
of one of our most ambitious and refined ambassadors, 
would have written a lyric, sounding the praises of 
a German " onion pie," ending each stanza with 

Ach, Liebe! Ach, mein Gott! 

and would have printed it in America, with his host's 
initials afiixed? 

[i86] 



EUGENE FIELD 

My own matriculation at Eugene's College of Un- 
reason was in this wise. In 1887, Mr. Ben Ticknor, 
the Boston publisher, was complaining that he needed 
some new and promising authors to enlarge his book- 
list. The New York Sun and Tribune had been copy- 
ing Field's rhymes and prose extravaganzas — the 
former often very charming, the latter the broadest 
satire of Chicago life and people. I suggested to Mr. 
Ticknor that he should ask the poet-humorist to col- 
lect, for publication in book-form, the choicest of his 
writings thus far. To make the story brief, Mr. Field 
did so, and the outcome — at which I was somewhat 
taken aback — was the remarkable book, Culture's 
Garland, with its title imitated from the sentimental 
" Annuals " of long ago, and its cover ornamented 
with sausages linked together as a coronal wreath! 
The symbol certainly fitted the greater part of the 
contents, which ludicrously scored the Chicago " cul- 
ture " of that time, and made Pullman, Armour, and 
other commercial magnates of the Lakeside City spe- 
cial types in illustration. All this had its use, and 
many of the sufferers long since became the farceur's 
devoted friends. The Fair showed the country what 
Chicago really was and is. Certainly there is no other 
American city where the richest class appear so en- 
thusiastic with respect to art and literature. " The 
practise of virtue makes men virtuous," and even if 
there was some pretence and affectation in the culture 
of ten years ago, it has resulted in as high standards 
of taste as can elsewhere be found. Moreover, if 
our own " four hundred " had even affected, or made 

[187] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

it the fashion to be interested in, whatever makes 
for real culture, the intellectual life of this metropolis 
would not now be so far apart from the " social 
swim." There were scattered through Culture's 
Garland not a few of Field's delicate bits of verse. 
In some way he found that I had instigated Mr. 
Ticknor's request, and, although I was thinking solely 
of the publisher's interests, he expressed unstinted 
gratitude. Soon afterwards I was delighted to receive 
from him a quarto parchment " breviary," containing 
a dozen ballads, long and short, engrossed in his ex- 
quisitely fine handwriting, and illuminated with col- 
ored borders and drawings by the poet himself. It 
must have required days for the mechanical execu- 
tion, and certainly I would not now exchange it for 
its weight in diamonds. This was the way our friend- 
ship began. It was soon strengthened by meetings 
and correspondence, and never afterwards broken. 

Some years ago, however, I visited Chicago, to lec- 
ture, at the invitation of its famous social and literary 
" Twentieth Century Club." This was Eugene's op- 
portunity, and I ought not to have been as dumfounded 
as I was, one day, when our evening papers copied 
from the Chicago Record a " very pleasant joke " at 
the expense of his town and myself ! It was headed : 
"Chicago Excited! Tremendous Preparations for 
His Reception," and went on to give the order and 
route of a procession that was to be formed at the 
Chicago station and escort me to my quarters — stop- 
ping at Armour's packing-yards and the art-galleries 
on the way. It included the " Twentieth Century 

[i88] 



EUGENE FIELD 

Club " in carriages, the " Browning Club " in busses, 
and the '' Homer Club " in drays; ten millionaire pub- 
lishers, and as many pork-packers, in a chariot drawn 
by white horses, followed by not less than two hun- 
dred Chicago poets afoot ! I have no doubt that Eu- 
gene thought I would enjoy this kind of advertise- 
ment as heartily as he did. If so, he lacked the gift 
of putting himself in the other man's place. But his 
sardonic face, a-grin like a school-boy's, was one with 
two others which shone upon me when I did reach 
Chicago, and my pride was not wounded sufficiently to 
prevent me from enjoying the restaurant luncheon to 
w^hich he bore me off in triumph. I did promise to 
square accounts with him, in time, and this is how 
I fulfilled my word. The next year, at a meeting of 
a suburban " Society of Authors," a certain lady 
journalist was chaffed as to her acquaintanceship with 
Field, and accused of addressing him as '' Gene." At 
this she took umbrage, saying : '' It's true we worked 
together on the same paper for five years, but he was 
always a perfect gentleman. I never called him 
' Gene.' " This was reported by the press, and gave 
me the refrain for a skit entitled " Katharine and 
Eugenio " : 

Five years she sate a-near him 

Within that type-strewn loft; 
She handed him the paste-pot, 

He passed the scissors oft ; 
They dipped in the same inkstand 

That crowned their desk between. 
Yet — he never called her Katie, 

She never called him " Gene ". 

[189] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

Though close — ah ! close — the droplight 

That classic head revealed, 
She was to him Miss Katharine, 

He — naught but Mister Field; 
Decorum graced his upright brow 

And thinned his lips serene, 
And, though he wrote a poem each hour, 

Why should she call him " Gene " ? 

She gazed at his sporadic hair — 

She knew his hymns by rote; 
They longed to dine together 

At Casey's table d'hote; 
Alas, that Fortune's " hostages " — 

But let us draw a screen! 
He dared not call her Katie ; 

How could she call him " Gene " ? 

I signed my verses " By one of Gene's Victims " ; they 
appeared in The Tribune, and soon were copied by 
papers in every part of the country. Other stanzas, 
with the same refrain, were added by the funny men 
of the Southern and Western press, and it was months 
before " Gene " saw the last of them. The word 
" Eugenio," which was the name by which I always 
addressed him in our correspondence, left him in no 
doubt as to the initiator of the series, and so our 
" Merry War " ended, I think, with a fair quittance 
to either side. 

Grieving, with so many others, over Yorick's pre- 
mature death, it is a solace for me to remember how 
pleasant was our last interchange of written words. 
Not long ago, he was laid very low by pneumonia, 
but recovered, and before leaving his sick-room wrote 

[190] 



EUGENE FIELD 

me a sweetly serious letter — with here and there a 
sparkle in it — but in a tone sobered by illness, and full 
of yearning for a closer companionship with his 
friends. At the same time he sent me the first edi- 
tions, long ago picked up, of all my earlier books, and 
begged me to write on their fly-leaves. This I did; 
with pains to gratify him as much as possible, and in 
one of the volumes wrote this little quatrain : 

TO EUGENE FIELD 

Death thought to claim you in this year of years. 
But Fancy cried — and raised her shield between — 

" Still let men weep, and smile amid their tears ; 
Take any two beside, but spare Eugene ! " 

In view of his near escape, the hyperbole, if such 
there was, might well be pardoned, and it touched 
Eugene so manifestly that — now that the eddy indeed 
has swept him away, and the Sabine Farm mourns 
for its new-world Horace — I cannot be too thankful 
that such was my last message to him. 

Eugene Field was so mixed a compound that it will 
always be impossible quite to decide whether he was 
wont to judge critically of either his own conduct or 
his literary creations. As to the latter, he put the 
worst and the best side by side, and apparently cared 
alike for both. That he did much beneath his 
standard, fine and true at times, — is unquestionable, 
and many a set of verses went the rounds that harmed 
his reputation. On the whole, I think this was due 
to the fact that he got his stated income as a news- 
paper poet and jester, and had to furnish his score of 

[191] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

" Sharps and Flats " with more or less regularity. For 
all this, he certainly has left pieces, compact of the 
rarer elements, sufficient in number to preserve for 
him a unique place among America's most original 
characters, scholarly wits, and poets of brightest fancy. 
Yorick is no more ! But his genius will need no chance 
upturning of his grave-turf for its remembrance. 
When all is sifted, its fame is more likely to strengthen 
than to decline. 



[192] 



XVI 
EDWIN BOOTH ^ 

WHEN we mark the struggles of a brave spirit 
against the restrictions of an ignoble body, 
we pay admiring honors to every success that it 
achieves. It is the contest between human will and 
untoward fate. Each triumph is a victory of man's 
dearest heritage, spiritual power. Some have made 
themselves great captains despite physical weakness 
and natural fear; scholars and writers have become 
renowned, though slow to learn, or, haply, '' with wis- 
dom at one entrance quite shut out " ; nor have stam- 
mering lips and shambling figure prevented the rise 
of orators and actors, determined to give utterance to 
the power within. But, in our approval of the energy 
that can so vanquish the injuries of fortune, we are 
apt to overrate its quality, and to forget how much 
more exquisite the endowment would be if allied with 
those outward resources which complete the full 
largess of Heaven's favoritism. In the latter case we 
yield our unqualified affection to beings who afford 
us an unqualified delight. We are reverencing the 
gifts of the gods; and in their display see clearly that 
no human will. can secure that nobility of appearance 
' The Atlantic Monthly, :May, 1866. 

[193] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

and expression which a few maintain without inten- 
tion, and by right of birth. 

Bodily fitness is no small portion of a genius for 
any given pursuit; and, in the conduct of life, the 
advantages of external beauty can hardly be overrated. 
All thinkers have felt this. Emerson says " of that 
beauty which reaches its perfection in the human 
form," that " all men are its lovers; wherever it goes, 
it creates joy and hilarity, and everything is per- 
mitted to it." Now there is a beauty of parts, which 
is external; and another of the expression of the soul, 
which is the superior. But in its higher grades the 
former implies the latter. Socrates said that his ugli- 
ness accused just as much in his soul, had he not cor- 
rected it by education. And Montaigne writes : '' The 
same word in Greek signifies both fair and good, and 
Holy Word often calls those good which it would 
call fair " ; and, moreover, " Not only in the men that 
serve me, but also in the beasts, I consider this point 
within two finger-breadths of goodness." 

Can we claim too much for physical adaptation in 
our measure of the rank to be accorded an actor? 
For he of all others, not excepting the orator, makes 
the most direct personal appeal to our tastes. In his 
own figure he holds the mirror up to Nature, while 
his voice must be the echo of her various tones. By 
the law of aristocracy in art, he must be held so much 
the greater, as he is able to depict the nobler mani- 
festations of her forms and passions. Of course the 
first excellence is that of truth. A spirited enactment 
of Malvolio, of Falstaff, or of Richard Crookback has 

[194] 



EDWIN BOOTH 

the high merit of faithfully setting forth humanity, 
though in certain whimsical or distorted phases; but 
we are more profoundly enriched by the portrayal of 
higher types. And thus, in making an actor's chosen 
and successful studies a means of measuring his genius, 
we find in the self -poise which wins without effort, and 
must throughout sustain the princely Hamlet, or 
Othello tender and strong, that grand manner which, 
in painting, places the art of Raphael and Angelo above 
that of Hogarth or Teniers. Each may be perfect 
in its kind, but one kind exceeds another in glory. 

We have two pictures before us. One, on paper 
yellow with the moth of years, is the portrait of an 
actor in the costume of Richard HI. What a classic 
face ! English features are rarely cast in that antique 
mould. The head sits lightly on its columnar neck, 
and is topped with dark-brown curls, that cluster like 
the acanthus; the gray eyes are those which were justly 
described as being " at times full of fire, intelligence, 
and splendor, and again of most fascinating soft- 
ness "; and the nose is of " that peculiar Oriental con- 
struction, which gives an air of so much distinction 
and command." Such was the countenance of Junius 
Brutus Booth, — that wonderful actor, who, to powers 
of scorn, fury, and pathos rivalling those which il- 
lumined the uneven performances of Edmund Kean, 
added scholastic attainments which should have equal- 
ized his efforts, and made every conception harmonious 
with the graces of a philosophical and cultured soul. 
In structure the genius of the elder Booth was indeed 
closely akin to that of Kean, if not the rarer of the 

[195] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

two, notwithstanding the triumphant assertion of 
Doran, who says that Booth was driven by Kean's 
superiority to become a hero to " transpontine audi- 
ences." Each reHed upon his intuitive, off-hand con- 
ception of a given part, and fell back to nature in his 
methods, throwing aside conventionalisms which had 
long ruled the English stage. But the former was 
capable of more fervid brightness in those flashes 
which characterized the acting of them both. Still, 
there was something awry within him, which in his 
body found a visible counterpart. The shapely trunk, 
crowned with the classic head, was set upon limbs of 
an ungainly order, short, of coarse vigor, and '' gnarled 
like clumps of oak." Above, all was spiritual; below, 
of the earth, earthy, and dragging him down. Strong 
souls, thus inharmoniously embodied, have often de- 
veloped some irregularity of heart or brain : a dispro- 
portion, which only strength of purpose or the most 
favorable conditions of life could balance and over- 
come. With the elder Booth, subjected to the varying 
fortunes and excitements of the early American stage, 
the evil influence gained sad ascendency, and his finest 
renditions grew " out of tune and harsh." In depicting 
the pathetic frenzy of Lear, such actors as he and 
Kean, when at their best, can surpass all rivals; and 
the grotesque, darkly powerful ideals of Richard and 
Shylock are precisely those in which they will startle 
us to the last, gathering new, though fitful, expressions 
of hate and scorn, as their own natures sink from 
ethereal to grosser atmospheres. The mouth catches 
most surely the growing tendency of a soul; and on 

[196] 



EDWIN BOOTH 

the lips of the elder Booth there sat a natural half- 
sneer of pride, which defined the direction in which 
his genius would reach its farthest scope. 

The second picture is a likeness of this great actor's 
son, — of a face and form now wonted to all who sus- 
tain the standard drama of to-day. Here is something 
of the classic outline and much of the Greek sensuous- 
ness of the father's countenance, but each softened 
and strengthened by the repose of logical thought, and 
interfused with that serene spirit which lifts the man 
of feeling so far above the child of passions unre- 
strained. The forehead is higher, rising toward the 
region of the moral sentiments; the face is long and 
oval, such as Ary Scheffer loved to draw; the chin 
short in height, but, from the ear downwards, length- 
ening its distinct and graceful curve. The head is of 
the most refined and thoroughbred Etruscan type, with 
dark hair thrown backwards and flowing student-wise ; 
the complexion, pale and striking. The eyes are black 
and luminous, the pupils contrasting sharply with the 
balls in which they are set. If the profile and forehead 
evince taste and a balanced mind, it is the hair and 
complexion, and, above all, those remarkable eyes, — 
deep-searching, seen and seeing from afar, — that re- 
veal the passions of the father in their heights and 
depths of power. The form is taller than either that 
of the elder Booth or Kean, lithe, and disposed in 
symmetry; with broad shoulders, slender hips, and 
comely tapering limbs, all supple, and knit together 
with harmonious- grace. We have mentioned personal 
fitness as a chief badge of the actor's peerage, and it 

[197] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

is of one of the born nobility that we have to speak. 
Amongst those who have few bodily disadvantages 
to overcome, and who, it would seem, should glide 
into an assured position more easily than others climb, 
we may include our foremost American tragedian, — 
Edwin Thomas Booth/ 

But men are often endowed with plenteous gifts 
for which they never find employment, and thus go 
to the bad without discovering their natural bent to 
others or even to themselves. In the years preceding 
our late war how many were rated as vagabonds, who 
had that within them which has since won renown! 
They were " born soldiers," and, in the piping time of 
peace, out of unison with the bustling crowd around 
them. Life seemed a muddle, and of course they went 
astray. But when the great guns sounded, and the 
bugles rang, they came at once to their birthright, and 



* Not Edwin Forrest Booth, as often and erroneously writ- 
ten. Our actor, born in November, 1833, derived his middle 
name from Thomas Flyn, the English comedian, his father's 
contemporary and friend. Edwin was the chosen companion 
of his father in the latter's tours throughout the United States, 
and was regarded by the old actor with a strange mixture of 
repulsion and sympathy, — the one evinced in lack of outward 
ajffection and encouragement, the other in a silent but undoubted 
appreciation of the son's promise. The boy, in turn, so fully 
understood the father's temperament, that a bond existed be- 
tween the two. Whether to keep Edwin from the stage, or 
in caprice, the elder Booth at first rarely permitted the younger 
to see him act ; but the son, attending the father to the theatre, 
would sit in the wings for hours, listening to the play, and hav- 
ing all its parts so indelibly impressed on his memory as to 
astonish his brother-actors in later years. 

[198] 



EDWIN BOOTH 

many a ne'er-do-well made himself a patriot and hero 
forever. 

Edwin Booth, having the capabilities of a great 
actor, found himself about the stage in his childhood, 
and, by an unwonted kindness of fortune, went through 
with perhaps the exact training his genius required. 
If the atmosphere of the theatre had not almost en- 
wrapt his cradle, and thus become a necessity of his 
after years, his reflective, brooding temperament and 
aesthetic sensitiveness might have impelled him to one 
of the silent professions, or kept him an irresolute 
dreamer through an unsuccessful life. But while his 
youth was passed in the green-room, a stern discipline 
early made him self-reliant, matured his powers, taught 
him executive action, and gave him insight of the pas- 
sions and manners of our kind. As for black-letter 
knowledge, such a nature as his was sure to gain that, 
— to acquire in any event, and almost unknowingly, 
w^hat mere talent only obtains by severe, methodical 
application. We know how genius makes unconscious 
studies, while in the daily routine of life. The soul 
works on, unassisted, and at length bursts out into 
sudden blaze. How did Booth study? Just as young 
Franklin weighed the minister's sermons, while men- 
tally intent upon the architecture of the church roof. 
Night after night the lonely face brightened the shad- 
ows of the stage-wings, and the delicate ear drank in 
the folly, the feeling, the wit and wisdom of the play. 
To such a boyhood the personal contact of his father's 
nature w^as all in all. It was quaffing from the foun- 
tain-head, not from streams of the imitation of imita- 

[199] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

tion. As the genius of the father refined the intellect 
and judgment of the son, so the weaknesses coupled 
with that genius taught him strength of character and 
purpose. We have heard of nothing more dramatic 
than the wandering companionship of this gifted pair, 
— whether the younger is awaiting, weary and patient, 
the end of the heard but unseen play, or watching over 
his father at a distance, when the clouds settled thickly 
upon that errant mind, through long nights and along 
the desolate streets of a strange city. With other years 
came the time for young Booth to fight his own bat- 
tle, and wander on his own account through an ap- 
prenticeship preceding his mature successes, — to gain 
those professional acquirements which were needed 
to complete his education, and to make that tasteful 
research to which he naturally inclined. He is now 
in the sunshine of his noonday fame; and we may esti- 
mate his measure of excellence by a review of those 
chosen and successful renderings, that seem most 
clearly to define his genius, and to mark the limits 
of height and versatility which he can attain. 

Take, then, the part of Hamlet, which, in these 
days, the very mention of his name suggests. Little 
remains to be said of that undying play, whose pith 
and meaning escaped the sturdy English critics, until 
Coleridge discovered it by looking into his own soul, 
and those all-searching Germans pierced to the centre 
of a disposition quite in keeping with their national 
character. A score of lights have since brought out 
every thought and phrase, and we now have Hamlet 
so clearly in our mind's eye as to wonder how our 

[200] 



EDWIN BOOTH 

predecessors failed to comprehend his image. But 
what does this tragedy demand of an actor? Pro- 
verbially, that he himself shall fill it, and hold the stage 
from its commencement to its end. The play of 
" Hamlet " is the part of Hamlet. The slowness of 
its action, and the import of its dialogue and solilo- 
quies, make all depend upon the central figure. Next, 
he is to depict the most accomplished gentleman ever 
drawn; not gallant, gay Mercutio, nor courtly Bene- 
dict, but the prince and darling of a realm; one who 
cannot " lack preferment," being of birth above mean 
ambition and self-conscious unrest; a gentleman by 
heart, no less, — full of kindly good-fellowship, brook- 
ing no titles with his friends, loving goodness and 
truth, impatient of fools, scorning affectation; more- 
over, the glass of fashion and the mould of form, the 
modern ideal of manly beauty, — which joins with the 
classic face and figure that charm of expression reveal- 
ing a delicate mind within. For our Hamlet is both 
gentleman and scholar. History and philosophy have 
taught him the vice of kings, the brevity of power 
and forms, the immortality of principles, the art of 
generalization; while contact with society has made 
him master of those " shafts of gentle satire," for 
which all around him are his unconscious targets. 
His self-respect and self-doubt balance each other, un- 
til the latter outweighs the former, under the awful 
pressure of an unheard-of woe. Finally, he comes 
before us in that poetical, speculative period of life 
following the years of study and pleasure, and pre- 
ceding those of executive leadership. Prince, gentle- 

[201] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

man, scholar, poet, — he is each, and all together, and 
attracts us from every point of view. 

Upon this noblest youth — so far in advance of his 
rude and turbulent time — throw a horror that no 
philosophy, birth, nor training can resist — one of those 
weights beneath which all humanity bows shuddering; 
cast over him a stifling dream, where only the soul 
can act, and the limbs refuse their offices; have him 
pushed along by Fate to the lowering, ruinous catas- 
trophe; and you see the dramatic chain work of a part 
which he who would enact Hamlet must fulfil. 

It has been said, distinguishing between the effects 
of comedy and tragedy, that to render the latter en- 
nobles actors, so that successful tragedians have ac- 
quired graces of personal behavior. But one who does 
not possess native fineness before his portrayal of 
Hamlet will never be made a gentleman by the part. 
In its more excited phases, a man not born to the 
character may succeed. As in Lear, the excess of the 
passion displayed serves as a mask to the actor's dis- 
position. In its repose, the ideal Hamlet is hard to 
counterfeit. In the reflective portions and exquisite 
minor play which largely occupy its progress, and in 
the princely superiority of its chief figure, there can 
be little acting in the conventional sense. There is a 
quality which no false ware can imitate. The player 
must be himself. 

This necessity, we think, goes far toward Booth's 
special fitness for the part. He is in full sympathy 
with it, whether on or off the stage. We know it from 
our earliest glance at that lithe and sinuous figure, 

[202] 



EDWIN BOOTH 

elegant in the solemn garb of sables, — at the pallor 
of his face and hands, the darkness of his hair, those 
eyes that can be so melancholy-sweet, yet ever look 
beyond and deeper than the things about him. Where 
a burlier tragedian must elaborately pose himself 
for the youth he would assume, this actor so easily 
and constantly falls into beautiful attitudes and move- 
ments, that he seems to go about, as we heard a hu- 
morist say, *' making statues all over the stage." No 
picture can equal the scene where Horatio and Mar- 
cellus swear by his sword, he holding the crossed hilt 
upright between the two, his head thrown back and 
lit with high resolve. In the fencing-bout with Laertes 
he is the apotheosis of grace; and since, though his 
height and shoulder-breadth are perfect, he is some- 
what spare in form, you call to mind — in accounting 
for this charm of motion, not studied, " like old Hay- 
ward's, between two looking-glasses " — the law that 
beauty is frame-deep ; that grace results from the con- 
scious, harmonious adjustment of joints and bones, 
and not from accidental increase and decrease of their 
covering. There is more hidden art in his sitting atti- 
tudes upon the quaint lounges of the period; whether 
rebuking his own remissness, or listening to " the 
rugged Pyrrhus," or playing upon old Polonius, — set- 
ting his breast, as it were, against the thorn of his 
own disgust. 

A sense of the fitness of things makes Booth hold 
himself in close restraint when not engaged upon the 
sharper crises of the play. This we conceive to be 
the true art-spirit. There is no attempt to rouse the 

[203] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

house by elocutionary climaxes or quick-stopping 
strides. Like Betterton, he courts rapturous silence 
rather than clamorous applause. So finished is all this 
as a study, that the changes into the more dramatic 
passages at first grate harshly upon the eye and ear. 
For, after all, it is a tragedy, full of spectral terrors. 
Lord Hamlet feels it in his soul. Why should this 
delicate life be so rudely freighted? Booth, faithful 
to the action, accepts the passion and the pang. We 
hardly relish his gasping utterance and utter fall, when 
the Ghost rehearses his story on those solemn battle- 
ments of Elsinore. But think what he is seeing: not 
the stage-vision for which we care so little, but the 
spectre of his father, — a midnight visitant from the 
grave ! It has been asserted that no man ever believed 
he saw a spirit and survived the shock. And it is 
strongly urged, as a defence of Booth's conception of 
this scene, that, in the closet interview with the Queen, 
after the slaying of Polonius, and on the Ghost's reap- 
pearance, we, now wrought up to the high poetic pitch 
by the dialogue and catastrophe, and by the whole 
progress of the piece, ourselves catch the key, expect, 
and fully sympathize with his horror and prostration, 
and accept the fall to earth as the proper sequel to that 
dreadful blazon from the other world. Notwithstand- 
ing this, it seems to us that Booth should tone down 
his manner in the first Act. The audience has hardly 
left the outer life, and cannot identify itself with the 
player; and an artist must acknowledge this fact, and 
not too far exceed the elevation of his hearers. 

Five years ago there was a weakness in Booth's 
[204] 



EDWIN BOOTH 

voice, making the listener apprehensive of the higher 
and louder tones. This insufficiency has passed away 
with practice and grow^th, and his utterance now has 
precisely the volume required in Hamlet, — being mu- 
sical and distinct in the cjuiet parts, and fully sustain- 
ing each emotional outburst. 

In effective compositions there is a return to the 
theme or refrain of the piece, when the end is close 
upon us. One of the finest points in this play is, that 
after the successive episodes of the killing of Polonius, 
the madness and death of Ophelia, and the wild bout 
with Laertes at her burial, Hamlet reassumes his every- 
day nature, and is never more thoroughly himself than 
when Osric summons him to the fencing-match, and 
his heart grows ill with the shadow of coming death. 
The Fates are just severing his thready events that 
shall sweep a whole dynasty, like the house of Atreus, 
into one common ruin, are close at hand; but Philos- 
ophy hovers around her gallant child, and the sweet, 
wise voice utters her teachings for the last time : " If 
it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it 
will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come; the 
readiness is all. Let be." Then follow the courtesy, 
the grace, the fraud, the justice, of the swift, last 
scene; the curtain falls; and now the yearning sym- 
pathies of the hearers break out into sound, and the 
actor comes before the footlights to receive his meed 
of praise. How commonplace it is to read that such a 
one was called before the curtain and bowed his 
thanks ! But sit there ; listen to the applauding clamor 
of two thousand voices, be yourself lifted on the waves 

[205] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

of that exultation, and for a moment you forget how 
soon all this will be hushed forever, and, in the tri- 
umph of the actor, the grander, more enduring genius 
of the writer whose imagination first evoked the spell. 
The performance of Richelieu, from one point of 
view, is a complete antithesis to that of the melancholy 
Dane. In the latter we see and think of Booth; in the 
former, his household friends, watching My Lord 
Cardinal from first to last, have nothing to recall him 
to their minds. The man is transformed, is acting 
throughout the play. Voice, form and countenance 
are changed; only the eyes remain, and they are vol- 
canic with strange lustre, — mindful of the past, sus- 
picious of the present, fixed still upon the future with 
piercing intent. The soul of the Cardinal, nearing its 
leave of the tenement that has served it so long, glares 
out of the windows, with supernatural regard, over the 
luxury, the intrigue, the danger, the politics, the empire 
it must soon behold no more. As the piece is now pro- 
duced, with fidelity to details of use and decoration, — 
with armor, costumery, furniture and music of the 
period of Louis XIIL, — with all this boast of heraldry 
and pomp of power, the illusion is most entire. The 
countenance is that of the old portrait; white flowing 
locks, cap, robes, raised mustache, and pointed beard, 
— all are there. The voice is an old man's husky 
treble, and we have the old man's step, the tremor, and 
recurring spasmodic power; nor is there any moment 
when the actor forgets the part he has assumed. Yes, 
it is age itself; but the sunset of a life whose noon- 
day was gallantry, valor, strength, — and intellectual 

[206] 



EDWIN BOOTH 

strength never so much as now. How we lend our 
own impulses to the effort with which the veteran 
grasps the sword wherewith he shore " the stalwart 
Englisher," strive with him in that strong yearning 
to whirl it aloft, sink with him in the instant, nerve- 
less reaction, and sorrow that "a child could slay 
Richelieu now ! " He is not the intriguer of dark 
tradition, wily and cruel for low ambitious ends, but 
entirely great, in his protection of innocence and long- 
ing for affection, and most of all in that supreme love 
of France to which his other motives are subservient. 
Booth seizes upon this as the key-note of the play, 
and is never so grand as when he rises at full height 
with the averment, 

I found France rent asunder ; 
The rich men despots, and the poor banditti ; 
Sloth in the mart, and schism within the temple ; 
Brawls festering to rebellion, and weak laws 
Rotting away with rust in antique sheaths, — 
/ have re-created France! 

Bulwer's Richelieu, though written in that au- 
thor's pedantic, artificial manner, and catching the 
groundlings with cheap sentiment and rhetorical plati- 
tudes, is yet full of telling dramatic effects, which, 
through the inspiration of a fine actor, lift the most 
critical audience to sudden heights. One of this sort 
is justly famous. We moderns, who so feebly catch 
the spell which made the Church of Rome sovereign 
of sovereigns for a thousand years, have it cast full 
upon us in the scene where the Cardinal, deprived of 

[207] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

temporal power, and defending his beautiful ward 
from royalty itself, draws around her that Church's 
" awful circle," and cries to Baradas, 

Set but a foot within that holy ground. 

And on thy head — yea, though it wore a crown — 

/ launch the curse of Rome! 

Booth's expression of this climax is wonderful. There 
is perhaps nothing, of its own kind, to equal it upon the 
present stage. Well may the king's haughty parasites 
cower, and shrink aghast from the ominous voice, the 
finger of doom, the arrows of those lurid, unbearable 
eyes! But it is in certain intellectual elements and 
pathetic undertones that the part of Richelieu, as con- 
ceived by Bulwer, assimilates to that of Hamlet, and 
comes within the realm where our actor's genius holds 
assured sway. The argument of the piece is spiritual 
power. The body of Richelieu is wasted, but the soul 
remains unscathed, with all its reason, passion, and 
indomitable will. He is still prelate, statesman and 
poet, and equal to a world in arms. 

The requisite subtilty of analysis, and sympathy 
with mental finesse, must also specially adapt this actor 
to the correct assumption of the character of lago. 
Those who have never seen him in it may know by 
analogy that his merits are not exaggerated. We take 
it that lago is a sharply intellectual personage, though 
his logic, warped by grovelling purpose, becomes 
sophistry, while lustful and envious intrigues occupy 
his skilful brain. We have described the beauty of 
Booth's countenance in repose. But it is equally re- 

[208] 



EDWIN BOOTH 

markable for mobility, and his most expressive results 
are produced by liftings of the high-arched brows and 
the play of passions about the flexible mouth. The 
natural line of his lip, not scornful in itself, is on 
that straight border-ground where a hair's breadth can 
raise it into sardonic curves, transforming all its good 
to sneering evil. In his rendering, lago must become 
a shining, central incarnation of tempting deceit, with 
Othello's generous nature a mere puppet in his hands. 
As Richard III., we should look to find him most 
effective in schemeful soliloquy and the phases of as- 
sumed virtue and affection, while perhaps less eminent 
than his father or Edmund Kean in that headlong, 
strident unrest, which hurried on their representations 
to the fury of the retributive end. 

To give the distant reader our own impression of 
a great actor is a slow and delicate task, and perhaps 
the most we can accomplish is to set him before others 
somewhat as he has appeared to us, and to let each 
decide for himself the question of histrionic rank. But 
have we not unconsciously defined our view of the 
excellence of Booth's genius, and hinted at its limita- 
tions? The latter are by no means narrow, for his 
elastic, adaptable nature insures him versatility; and, 
despite the world's scepticism as to the gift of an artist 
to do more than one thing well, he is acknowledged 
to surpass our other actors in a score of elegant parts. 
Amongst these are Pescara, Petruchio, and Sir Edward 
Mortimer; while in a few pieces of the French ro- 
mance-school, such as Rny Bias, and that terrible 
The King's Jester, he has introduced to us studies 

[209] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

of a novel and intensely dramatic kind. As for the 
lighter order, the greater including the less, our best 
Hamlet should be the best " walking gentleman," if 
he elect to assume that versatile personage's offices. 
We know also that Booth's Shylock should be a mas- 
terly performance, since his voice, complexion, eyes, 
and inherited powers of scorn, all lend their aid to his 
mental appreciation of the part. But it is not our 
purpose to consider any of these roles. We only allude 
to them to say that in most directions his equal has 
not appeared on the American stage; and in qualifying 
an opinion of his powers, we make no exception in 
favor of his contemporaries, but, rather, of those who 
have been and shall be again, when Jove shall 

let down from his golden chain 
An age of better metal. 

As Hamlet, Mr. Booth will hardly improve his pres- 
ent execution, since he is now at the age of thirty-two, 
and can never fill more easily the youthful beauty of 
the part, without artifice, and, we may say, by the first 
intention. We should like to see him, ere many win- 
ters have passed over his head, in some new classic 
play, whose arrangement should not be confined to the 
bald, antique model, nor drawn out in sounding 
speeches like Talfourd's '' Ion," nor yet too much in- 
fused with the mingled Gothic elements of our own 
drama ; but warm with sunlight, magical with the grace 
of the young Athenian feeling, and full of a healthful 
action which would display the fairest endowments of 
his mind and person. As Lear or Shylock, he will 

[210] 



EDWIN BOOTH 

certainly grow in power as he grows in years, and 
may even gain upon his masterly performance of 
Richelieu. But in one department, and that of an im- 
portant order, he will perhaps never reach the special 
eminence at which we place a few historic names. 

Our exception includes those simply powerful char- 
acters, the ideal of which his voice and magnetism 
cannot in themselves sustain. At certain lofty pas- 
sages he relies upon nervous, electrical effort, the nat- 
ural weight of his temperament being unequal to the 
desired end. Those flashing impulses, so compatible 
with the years of Richelieu and the galled purpose of 
Shylock, would fail to reveal satisfactorily the massive 
types, which rise by a head, like Agamemnon, above 
the noblest host. Dramatic representations may be 
classed under the analogous divisions of poetry: for 
instance, the satirical, the bucolic, the romantic, the 
reflective, the epic. The latter has to do with those 
towering creatures of action — Othello, Coriolanus, 
Virginius, Macbeth — somewhat deficient, whether 
good or evil, in the casuistry of more subtile disposi- 
tions, but giants in emotion, and kingly in repose. 
They are essentially masculine, and we connect their 
ideals with the stately figure, the deep chest-utterance, 
the slow, enduring majesty of mien. The genius of 
Mr. Booth has that feminine quality which, though 
allowing him a wider range, and enabling him to 
render even these excepted parts after a tuneful, elab- 
orate, and never ignoble method of his own, might 
debar him from giving them their highest interpreta- 
tion, — or, at least, from sustaining it, without sharp 

[211] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

falsetto effort, throughout the entire passage of a play. 
In a few impersonations, where Kemble, with all his 
mannerisms and defective elocution, and Macready, 
notwithstanding his uninspired, didactic nature, were 
most at their ease and successful, this actor would be 
somewhat put to his mettle, — a fact of which he is 
probably himself no less aware. 

After all, what are we saying, except that his genius 
is rather Corinthian than Doric, and therefore more 
cultured, mobile, and of wider range? If Kemble was 
the ideal Coriolanus and Henry V., he was too kingly 
as Hamlet, and Booth is the princeliest Hamlet that 
ever trod the stage. If Kean and the elder Booth 
were more supernal in their lightnings of passion and 
scorn, — and there are points in Richelieu which 
leave this a debatable question, — Edwin Booth is more 
equal throughout, has every resource of taste and study 
at his command; his action is finished to the last, his 
stage-business perfect, his reading distinct, and musical 
as a bell. He is thus the ripened product of our 
eclectic later age, and has this advantage about him, 
being an American, that he is many-sided, and draws 
from all foreign schools their distinctive elements to 
fuse into one new, harmonious whole. 

It is our fashion to speak of the decline of the 
Drama, to lament not only a decay of morals, manners, 
and elocution, but the desertion of standard excel- 
lence for the frippery which only appeals to the lightest 
popular taste. But this outcry proceeds mostly from 
old fogies, and those who only reverence the past, 
while the halo which gilds the memories of youth is 

[212] 



EDWIN BOOTH 

the cause of its ceaseless repetition. For it has been 
heard through every period. It was in the era when 
our greatest dramas were created that Ben Jonson, 
during a fit of the spleen, occasioned by the failure of 
The New Inn, begat these verses " to himself " : — 

Come, leave the loathed stage, 

And this more loathsome age. 
Where pride and impudence, in faction knit, 

Usurp the chair of wit! 
Inditing and arranging every day 

Something they call a play. 

At the commencement of our own century, and in 
what we are wont to consider the Roscian Period of 
the British stage, its condition seemed so deplorable 
to Leigh Hunt, then the dramatic critic of The News, 
as to require '' An Essay on the Appearance, Causes, 
and Consequences of the Decline of British Comedy." 
''Of Tragedy," he wrote, "we have nothing; and it 
is the observation of all Europe that the British Drama 
is rapidly declining." Yet the golden reign of the 
Kembles was then in its prime; and such names as 
Bannister, Fawcett, Matthews, Elliston, and Cooke 
occur in Hunt's graceful and authoritative sketches of 
the actors of the day.^ As to the newer plays, Gifford 
said, *' All the fools in the kingdom seem to have ex- 
claimed with one voice. Let us write for the theatre ! " 
Latter-day croakers would have us believe that the 

* Critical Essays on the Performers of the London Theatres, 
Including General Observations on the Practice and Genius of 
the Stage. London,' 1807. Some publisher would do well to 
give us a reprint of this noted collection. 

[213] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

Tragic Muse, indignant at the desecration of her Eng- 
lish altars, took flight across the ocean, alighting in 
solemn majesty at the Old Park Theatre of New York, 
but that she disappeared utterly in the final conflagra- 
tion of that histrionic shrine. Well, there are smoul- 
dering remnants of the Old Park still left to us; vet- 
eran retainers of the conventional stride, the disdainful 
gesture, the Kemble elocution, and that accent which 
was justly characterized as 

Ojus, insijjus, hijjus, and perfijjus! 

But the Muse is immortal, though so changing the 
fashion of her garb, it would appear, as often to fail 
of recognition from ancient friends. We think that 
modern acting is quite as true to nature as that of 
the school which has passed away, while its accessories 
are infinitely richer and more appropriate; and as to 
the popular judgment, how should that be on the de- 
cline? In America, — where common wealth makes 
common entrance, and the lines are not so clearly 
drawn between the unskilful many and the judicious 
few, — managers will always make concessions to the 
whim and folly of the hour. But we see no cause for 
discouragement, so long as dramas are set forth with 
the conscientious accuracy that has marked the latest 
productions of Hamlet and Richelieu, and while 
hushed and delighted audiences, drawn from every 
condition of society, leave all meaner performances to 
hang upon the looks and accents of Nature's sweet 
interpreter, — Edwin Booth. 

[214] 



XVII 

KING—" THE FROLIC AND THE GENTLE " ^ 

T?ROM the first he had the grace to put me on close 
-^ terms with him, although we seldom met when 
he had not just come from a distant region or was 
departing for some other point as far. In this wise, 
I could not free myself from the illusion that he was 
a kind of Martian — a planetary visitor, of a texture 
differing from that of ordinary Earth-dwellers. It 
seemed quite natural that he should map out the globe, 
and bore through it to see of what it was made. Now 
that he is gone, I am still looking for his casual return. 
There was one occasion which I did not share with 
others of his present celebrants; a period when I "had 
him to myself, and when he began an episode eventful 
in even his own full life. This was nothing less than 
that of his initial visit to the Old World. By chance, 
with a son in his first year out from Yale, I left New 
York, in the spring of 1882, on the same steamer 
which numbered on its passenger-roll Clarence King, 
and another mining-expert, at that time his partner. 
Of course I had read with admiration, a decade ear- 
lier, the Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada, and 
often had wondered why its luminous author had not 
shone continuously in our literature. I should have 

^ From Clarence King Memoirs. The King Memorial Com- 
mittee of the Century Association, 1904. 

[215] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

wondered the more that I had never met him, had I 
not seen his name figuring in those society Hsts that 
were quite ahen to my quiet round of Hfe. But at 
dinner we were at the same table. He was good 
enough to make the advance, and to claim a whimsical 
consanguinity on the score of our Clarentian prenom- 
ina. Now, I knew that he was a famous government 
geodeticist, but had no conception of his tempera- 
ment. Perhaps he took me with equal seriousness. 
At all events, he was more on his dignity, or gravity, 
than I ever afterward saw him. In the starry evening 
we walked the deck together, and talked of public 
affairs, books, etc., soon wandering to scientific re- 
search and discovery, concerning which I eagerly lis- 
tened to his theories of matter, vortex rings, the 
Earth's structure, the chances of a future life. I doubt 
if there was a laugh between us, and am sure that I 
never again found him so long in one humor. Nor 
was there anything in this thorough-bred, travel- 
dressed, cosmopolitan to suggest that he had not spent 
repeated seasons upon the hemisphere to which we 
were bound. 

Out on the blue, the next morning, what a trans- 
formation! As I have said, it was in fact King's 
first opportunity to visit Europe, strictly off duty, and 
with means that seemed to him beyond the dreams of 
avarice. He broke out into a thousand pranks and 
paradoxes. Freedom was what we both needed, and 
my own reserve was at an end the moment I saw him 
changed from the dignitary to a veritable Prince 
Florizel with the tray of tarts, offering lollipops right 

[216] 



KING—'' THE FROLIC AND THE GENTLE " 

and left. He and his comrade, I was speedily made 
to know, had " struck it rich " in a mine and were 
independent for life. His motto for one summer at 
least was "'' Vive la bagatelle!' His frolic was inces- 
sant and contagious. Here was my overnight phi- 
losopher with double-eagles in his pocket, one of which 
he periodically flipped in the air to decide wagers made 
upon every possible pretext between himself and his 
decidedly less buoyant colleague. He jested, fabled, 
sparkled, scorned concealment of his delight. Indeed, 
I verily believe that I then had the rare fortune, at the 
beginning of our friendship, first, to learn the re- 
sources and conviction of his noble mind, and in a 
trice to enjoy the ebullition of his mirth and fancy 
on some of the happiest days of his existence. 

He had with him a Gargantuan letter of credit. 
From a slip in his wallet he took and showed me a 
single draft for a thousand pounds, a very sacred spe- 
cial fund, which was to be piously expended for some 
one work of art, his roc's ^gg, his supreme trophy — 
in fine, the most beauteous and essential thing he might 
come upon in this tour. All this as gravely as if he 
were a Knight of the Grail, or meditating in the end 
to shift to America the Hotel Cluny or a court of the 
Alhambra. 

Among the many wagers which he forced his staid 
comrade to accept was one that compelled the loser 
to take the four of us, young and old, to Epsom on the 
Derby Day that would occur soon after our arrival 
in London. King lost this bet, plainly by his own 
intent. Everything was to come off in the traditional 

[217] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

style — that the Scriptures might be fulfilled to the ut- 
termost, as indeed they were. From the White Horse 
Inn, Piccadilly, a fortnight later, we took the road 
and shared its carnival, on the finest tallyho obtainable ; 
whip, guard, lackey, hampers and all. Nothing was 
omitted in the going and coming. It was a brilliant 
day; our coach rounded to in the center of the field, 
as in Frith's picture, and there were the gipsy tum- 
blers on the green, the lunchers, the Prince of Wales, 
the race — with the Duke of Westminster's colors to 
the fore. Yes, and we saw a welcher mobbed, and 
everything else was accomplished; and I still cherish 
a fading tin-type exhibit of our group on the tallyho, 
lifting our cups, with King as toastmaster. 

Our Prince of paradox would not bide another day 
in London, but sped to France, leaving me a bearer 
of ill tidings to those who knew he was coming, 
and whose desire to welcome him taught me that he 
was an international character. When I overtook him 
in Paris he was on the eve of going to his longed-for 
Spain; not, indeed, to tarry even there, but to push 
right through to Morocco or Algeria, upon the trail of 
a certain unique shawl, or curtain, or tapestry, which 
he alone must possess. Of his return to Spain, his 
social life in France, his conquest of England, his 
blood-brotherhood with Ferdinand Rothschild, and of 
the spolia opima brought back to America, — are they 
not all written in the book of the hearts that held him 
dear ? 

Thus have I told how Pantagruel found Panurge, 
whom he loved all his life thereafter. I do not know 

[218] 



KING—' THE FROLIC AND THE GENTLE " 

whether it was on this ornamental journey that Clar- 
ence King's genius led him to the imperishable Helmet 
of Mambrino, now hung (by proxy) from its arm 
of wrought iron in the upper chambers of the Century. 
Whether it was then or afterward that he conceived 
his epistle to Don Horacio, and therewith imprisoned 
the very soul of Spain in the flask of his translucent 
English, the feat was equally enduring. Nothing 
comparable to the flavor of his style is to be found else- 
where, unless in the fantasy of his fellow-Centurion 
to whose loiterings in Mexico we owe '' San Antonio 
of the Gardens " and successive companion-pieces. 
King's speech and writ were iridescent with the imag- 
ination of the born romancer. Judge of the statue by 
the fragment, and think of what was lost to literature 
by the fact that it was not his vocation, but his ac- 
complishment. Nor was it his lot to escape enroll- 
ment with the inheritors of unfulfilled renown by wan- 
ning, like the most distinguished of his poet friends, 
a place in history as one of the arbiters of civiliza- 
tion, and one of those w^ho shape the destinies of their 
own lands. None the less, the by-play of some men 
has a quality unattained by a host of devotees who 
make its acquisition the labor of their workaday lives. 
Quls desiderio sit piidor! As I humbly stood on 
one side, that arctic morning when the choice and true 
followed his remains down the aisle, I knew that deep 
in the souls of all, however freezing the bitter wind, 
the memory of King was enshrined forever, and that 
his Manes would have no cause to make complaint of 
benefits forgot. 

[219] 



XVIII 

GUY WETMORE CARRYL ^ 

TF Guy Carryl had belonged to an earlier generation, 
-■- it may be conjectured that he would have become 
known chiefly as a poet. Such more certainly would 
have been the case if he had grown up in rural life, 
apart from the opportunities for general literary work 
that, as it were, came to him from the first. The lyrical 
bent was strong within him. This might almost be 
inferred from one little poem which he wrote, while 
still a lad, on the death of a child. It contains a tender 
conceit, expressed with the grace and feeling that have 
warranted its preservation in a collection of his ma- 
turer serious verse. 

His early writings, grave or gay, were often in 
metrical form, but none of the self-conscious type that 
marks the callow dreamer. They were the bright im- 
provisations of a young man who inherited, besides 
the poet's ear and voice, a sense of the mirthful, and 
the impulse to fashion whatever could lighten the 
heart of a child, or " that child's heart within the 
man's " which even the luckless still retain. The bulk 
of his diversified and abundant early work was of 

* Preface to The Garden of Years, and Other Poems. New 
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904. 

[220] 



GUY WET MO RE CARRY L 

the most buoyant nature possible. It could scarcely 
have been otherwise, with his unique facility and irre- 
pressible zest in life. 

Life must have seemed very fair to him, as he him- 
self seemed to others, when I first knew him in his 
student days. He did everything with a happy ease, 
and was apparently without a care. Handsome, 
healthy, debonair, — a youth in years and bearing, a 
man in his accomplishments, — he surely was Fortune's 
favorite. I remember his many graces, and the spark- 
ling quality of the plays that he wrote, and that proved 
so apt when enacted by fellow-students or by the asso- 
ciations for which some of them were cast. With all 
his relish for life, he was steadfastly ambitious, and 
the reverse of an idler devoted to pleasures every- 
where within his reach. Still, in the strength of his 
youth, he seemed quite equal to either experience or 
work, and likely to take his fill of both. 

This he succeeded in doing, as a poet, an observer, 
a journalist, a novelist, a man in touch with his com- 
rades and the world. The present collection embraces 
the poems which he had begun to arrange, substan- 
tially as here given, and which may be considered ex- 
pressive of his most elevated moods. They were the 
overflow of a talent that was largely occupied with 
lighter work, or, most of all, in the prose fiction by 
which he gained, and was increasing, his hold upon 
public favor. In the thought of all that might have 
been the outcome of after years, I am moved by the 
pity of their denial. As it is, the hands of his elders 
set the lamp on the stone that bears his name, — a 

[221] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

service which, had not the order of things been thus 
reversed, he would not have failed, in their behalf, 
to render. 

A young author traditionally catches some manner 
of his time that most appeals to him. Such has been 
the wont of poets who have lived to institute, in their 
turn, new modes, and to have their own followers. 
During the brief tenure of Guy Carryl's activity two 
opposing tendencies of verse have been much in vogue. 
One of these betrays a lack of feeling and spontaneity 
through its curious elaboration, and has been frankly 
termed, by its votaries, the decadent song of a dying 
century. At the other extreme is the virile, perhaps 
too careless, balladry of which the English imperialist 
poet is the forceful exemplar. It may be placed to 
the credit of the author of this volume that, — despite 
his attachment for France and her literature, and his 
residence in Paris during impressible years, — his verse 
is in nowise decadent; it betrays hardly a trace of the 
symbolist diction so little in accord with the genius of 
our English tongue. His ballads — and he is at his best 
in these — have the ring of a manful and genuinely 
American songster. They are what such a one might 
well compose at the outset of a new century, and in 
a country of the future. Nearly all of this verse 
is in the major key. Even its brooding sentiment is 
that of a live man and no weakling. 

Byron was a live man, and, to the end, a young 
man, never more so than when he thought himself 
otherwise. If it were just to apply a single epithet 
to the titular poem of this volume, it might be termed 

[222} 



GUY WETMORE CARRY L 

Byronic; for it is full of the Haroldian spirit of youth, 
— never more so than when its writer, at that stage 
where a man feels older than he ever again will feel 
until reaching his grand climacteric, breaks forth with 
"Heart of my heart, I am no longer young!" He 
revels, besides, like the Georgian pilgrim, in the sense 
of freedom, as he goes oversea to test the further 
world. " The Garden of Years " is a love poem; but 
its emotion is a warm under-color, toning a novice's 
pictures of travel during his wander-year. Tech- 
nically, the poem is cast in an original stanzaic form, 
effectively maintained from beginning to end. 

This prelude is not a criticism, but a tribute of af- 
fection and remembrance. Readers who care for po- 
etry will at once observe that a certain lyrical eloquence 
is a general characteristic of " The Garden of Years " 
and the ensuing shorter pieces, charged with a passion 
for Nature and a spirit of intense sympathy with their 
author's fellow-men. Equally manifest is his versa- 
tility, shown by the exultant tone of the hymn of re- 
habilitation, " Gloria Mundi," the tenderness of " At 
Twilight," and the light touch of '' The Debutante," 
— a range even more striking when contrasted with 
the whimsical drollery of his published volumes of 
humorous verse. He did right in grouping together 
the five ballads that follow the title-poem; and in so 
doing emphasized not only their strength, but the 
patriotism which was one of his most attractive traits. 
Proud of his country's victories, American to the core, 
he is nowhere more impulsive than in the fine lyric, 
" When the Great Gray Ships Come in," which sings 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

of peace rather than of war. It expresses, no less, his 
passion for the sea and his comprehension of it. Like 
that older bard of our Eastern Coast, he had the key to 
ocean's book of mystery; he loved its tides and eddies, 
the shells and flotsam along its shores, its laughter and 
mist and surge. The ships upon its bosom, the dere- 
licts that never reached their '' Haven-Mother," 
charmed his imagination. Finally, one may note how, 
throughout his swift and crowded experience, his sense 
of reverence was never dulled. The lines entitled 
" The Winds and the Sea Obey Him " came from no 
frivolous heart. As he looked out upon the waters, he 
was moved to write that " amid a vexing multitude 
of creeds " his faith abided still. " The Spirit of Mid- 
Ocean " — at once his valediction and a vivid token 
of his birthright as a poet — closes with unaffected 
homage to the Source whence inspiration flows to every 
soul — to each according to his degree and need : 

Hush ! If this be the servant, what must the Master be ? 



[224] 



XIX 

TREASURE TOMBS AT MYKEN^ ^ 

TN the following article I endeavor to give a state- 
-■■ ment of the significance, from a literary point of 
view, of the remarkable discoveries thus far made by 
Dr. Schliemann in his explorations at the site of My- 
kense. In order to do this we must recur to the epics 
of Homer and the majestic drama of the Attic 
tragedians — to the poetry of a race which has fur- 
nished the most exquisite models of all succeeding 
verse. 

Children, reading translations of Homer with de- 
light, yield by instinct to the charm of his matchless 
beauty and simplicity. They no more question his nar- 
rative than they doubt the histories of Csesar and Na- 
poleon, the voyages of Dampier, or the tales of the 
Conquistadores. But the most of us, when once past 
the age of faith in fairy-land and fable, have classed 
the songs of the wrath and valor of Achilles, the wit 
and wanderings of Odysseus, and the woes of the house 
of Atreus, among the more doubtful legends belong- 
ing to the youth of the world. The theories of Heyne, 
Wolf, and their pupils, which made the Homeric 
poems a growth or collection, rather than a personal 
composition, have caused us almost to distrust the in- 
* New York Daily Tribune, January 13, 1877. 
[225] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

clividuality of Homer himself. The best scholars have 
become reluctant to give any credence to the historical 
import of the Iliad and Odyssey, and indeed of the 
glorious procession of the Athenian masterpieces, 
whose themes were largely taken from the episodes 
and traditions gathered in the measures of the blind 
Ionian bard. The geography and narrative of Hero- 
dotos were long under a similar cloud. The known 
absurdities gravely interspersed throughout his history 
stamped him as a marvel-monger, and served to vitiate 
the entire record of the Pierian books. 

But in our own time a change has marked the opin- 
ion of the critical world. The exact research of 
modern travellers and geographers has proved that 
Herodotos, while overcredulous in minor and hearsay 
matters, was correct in essentials, even to the general 
topography and ethnology of the remote portions of 
Central Africa. And as for Homer, we begin to see 
in his poems a single creation, rather than a growth, 
and again to conceive of his simple and poetic individ- 
uality, — a blind, gray-bearded, heaven-endowed min- 
strel, wandering from Smyrna to Greece, and there 
from province to province, idealizing the history of his 
heroic period and race, and, either by oral or scriptural 
methods, fastening his ballad-epics upon time itself, 
so that, handed down from sire to son, they became 
the enduring treasure of all generations of mankind. 
We begin to feel — making allowance for the super- 
naturalism of an age when nothing was known of the 
earth itself, beyond the pillars of Herakles on the West 
and the Ganges on the East — when the gods were 

[226] 



TREASURE TOMBS AT MY KEN ^ 

thought to be the progenitors and companions of men 
— allowing for this we not only begin to feel that the 
Iliad and Odyssey are true to the physical status of 
the Mediterranean islands and shores, but we more 
than suspect that their stories of wars and warriors, 
of voyages, sieges, and of civil and domestic life, are 
the narratives of actual matters which were of the 
highest relative importance in a half -barbaric age; 
lastly, we look backward to find that Homer's per- 
sonages were living, loving, warring, human beings, 
and that, while yet scarcely having left the flesh, their 
deeds and sayings, by turns wise and paltry, joyous 
and tragical, were the most exciting themes of the 
minstrel of that ancient time. 

One of The Tribune's writers has well said that it 
is indeed a most fortunate thing that this man of our 
time has believed in Homer; that Dr. Schliemann was 
so impressed in youth with faith in the reality of the 
actions and manners depicted in the Ionic verse as 
to acquire a fortune with purpose to become an ex- 
plorer, and to prove by his own exertions the gen- 
eral historic truth of the Iliad and Odyssey. There 
has been much dispute over his achievements in the 
Troad. The spot selected, after preliminary experi- 
ments elsewhere, for his serious efforts to uncover 
the ruins of Troia, was chosen against the judgment 
of many scholars. The unearthed relics, although 
marked with the sun-emblem which might typify the 
name of Ilios, were not of such a character as at 
once to remove all scepticism from European archae- 
ologists. Even in his own country his reports were 

[227] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

received with criticism. Worn down by fever con- 
tracted on the banks of the Simois and Scamander, 
and hindered by the distrust of the Turkish author- 
ities, he transferred the scene of his operations to 
Greece. Here Curtius has been achieving wonders at 
Olympia, and restoring to light the buried temples 
and effigies of all Olympos' hierarchy. But the dis- 
ciple of Homer has undertaken labors that make the 
field of Olympian researches seem comparatively mod- 
ern, and now startles the reading world with the 
progress of his work at Mykense — a city destroyed by 
the Argives in the century after the erection of Olym- 
pia's first temple — a city whose king was the most 
powerful chieftain in Greece at the time when, with the 
collected Grecian fleet and more than a hundred thou- 
sand warriors, he sailed from Aulis to recover Helena 
and demolish the " lofty walls of Troy." 

Among our own experts, Bayard Taylor, the trav- 
eller, poet, and Hellenist, was one who fully and 
heartily declared his belief that Dr. Schliemann had 
discovered the true site of Ilion. His essay, which 
first appeared in The Tribune, was the most complete 
and pronounced of all the tributes awarded to the dis- 
coverer, and greatly encouraged him to continue in his 
chosen career. 

No coldness, in America at least, attended the re- 
ception of the news from Mykense which reached us 
on the loth of December. The Herald of that Sun- 
day contained a telegraphic report of Schliemann's 
dispatch to the King of Greece, dated November 28, 
and I think that the heart of each lover of learning, 

[228] 



TREASURE TOMBS AT MYKEN^ 

art, or song, leapt with wonder and something hke 
delight, accepting the genuineness and importance of 
the results obtained and the promise given out. It 
was felt that here was something substantial. There 
is no dispute over the site of Mykenae, as over that of 
Troy. The Cyclopean ruins, described by Pausanias 
17 centuries ago, are still partly visible to the trav- 
eller. The oral and written tradition of his time as- 
sumed them to be the very walls and monuments of 
Agamemnon's city, and, if they were not, their 
vraisemhlance was the image of reality itself. Ac- 
cording to the chronology which scholars usually 
adopt, Mykenge was at its prime B.C. 1184 — the date 
of the fall of Troy. It was destroyed by the Argives 
B.C. 468, 2,344 years ago, and there is no historic evi- 
dence that a new city was built upon its ruins. All 
this rendered it the more probable that under the dust 
of centuries Schliemann might have found, in com- 
parative preservation, the vaults and secret treasure- 
houses of the early chiefs of Argolis — possibly the 
once revered tomb of the King of Men himself. In 
a later dispatch we learn that Schliemann thinks the 
site was again peopled, and that an Argive city existed 
there for a long time, because the surface of the 
ground is full of the remains of a Greek age. On 
the 19th of November he had discovered enormous 
tombs, at the depth of 25 feet, surrounded by parallel 
Cyclopean walls; on the 24th he opened two more, 
which contained the bones of a man and a woman, and 
from these and adjoining vaults he obtained a vast 
amount of archselogical treasure — urns, vases, sculp- 

[229] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

tures, diadems, masks, domestic implements, sceptres 
— much of it pure gold, the rest composed of bronze, 
silver, and even of crystal and precious stones. The 
details of this marvellous '' find " were but briefly indi- 
cated in his hurried letter to King George, in which 
he waived all claim to the treasure, " sufficient to fill 
a large museum, and the most splendid in the world," 
and offered it " with intense enthusiasm, entirely to 
Greece." 

Later dispatches enumerate the articles found and 
fully confirm the assertion of the explorer, besides 
giving a more elaborate description of the position 
and character of the tombs thus opened. But when 
the first news crossed the Atlantic, it was felt, I say, 
that here was something of priceless meaning, and our 
own people were moved to something of the " en- 
thusiasm " displayed by the joyous discoverer him- 
self. True, he had used similar language in respect 
to what seemed to us the less assured triumph of his 
labors in the Troad. But it is this unbounded eager- 
ness and delight which go to the making of a great 
explorer and finally produce splendid results. There 
is always a sufficient number of critics icily cold to 
freeze out those who are pretenders; and when a 
worthy aspirant appears, it requires all the energy of a 
strong nature to sustain before them his heat and noble 
rage. 

The interest taken by our intelligent public in the 
news from Mykenae at once found expression in the 
daily journals. Let me allude to the amusing and 
somewhat provincial inconsistency of our English 

[230] 



TREASURE TOMBS AT MYKEN^ 

cousins in their comments upon our acquaintance with 
those paths of culture to which they have long been 
wonted, and which are supposed to lead to sweetness 
and light. For years they have accused us of too 
much pedantry and refinement in our life and letters. 
They have deprecated our hankering for the methods 
and relics of the Old World, for '' the glory that was 
Greece and the grandeur that was Rome." They have 
berated us for neglecting the home field, for our in- 
ability to discover American themes and properly treat 
them. Yet when some veritable success is reached by 
Americans in a field of which they claim the usufruct, 
they strike a different attitude, and w^e are treated to 
sneers at our ignorance, boorishness, and lack of scho- 
lastic feeling. It may be, as The Saturday Review 
implies, that it was necessary for us to purchase the 
Cesnola collection, seeing that therefrom, " as years 
roll on, American ladies will learn that Phoenician is 
not the European way of pronouncing Venetian, and 
popular education will thrive immensely." But the 
majority of the readers of The Tribune are more fa- 
miliar with the geography of Europe than any thou- 
sand men you can find in London are with that of these 
United States. I need not speak of the additional 
charm which for us our very isolation bestows upon 
the antique. But let me cite a fact which has its ap- 
plication. I am told that in this modern mercantile 
city of New York a " Greek Club " has been in health- 
ful and vigorous existence for the last nineteen years. 
It consists of a dozen gentlemen, gathered from vari- 
ous callings, who meet weekly at one another's houses, 

[231] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

during the winter months, and read the texts not only 
of the purest and most famous authors but of the 
minor rehcs of the Greek tongue. Doubtless some of 
these gentlemen, if we seek no further, will be able 
to enjoy and study intelligently the coming Cyprian 
antiquities, and doubtless there are others of their 
breed, even in our frontier towns, who take a lively in- 
terest in the researches of Curtius and Schliemann. 
It was a citizen of New Hampshire who assisted Di 
Cesnola, at the most trying period of his undertaking, 
with friendship, presence, and material aid. If 
any country has a better right than our own to 
the purchase of treasures unearthed by an Amer- 
ican consul, who depended largely on America 
for his resources, let its learned representatives 
now speak or else hereafter forever hold their 
peace. 

We come to the dramatic suggestiveness of Schlie- 
mann's discoveries, in their bearing upon the history 
and literature of ancient Greece. Agamemnon, the 
King of Men, son of Atreus, brother of Menelaos of 
Sparta, lord of Mykenae, and called by Homer the 
" ruler of many islands and of all Argos," is the heroic 
central figure — or figurehead — of the Homeric poems, 
as the leader of all Greece against Troy. In the Iliad 
he acts as a presiding genius, towering above the host 
as Saul above the people, the emblem of sovereignty 
and justice. The entire epos of that poem grows out 
of the dispute between him and Achilles as to the pos- 
session of Briseis. After the fall of Troy, the 
prophetess Kassandra, daughter of Priam, became the 

[232] 



TREASURE TOMBS AT MYKEN^ 

captive mistress of Agamemnon, and, according to 
tradition, warned him against returning to Mykenae. 
In the Odyssey, the story of his death is told and 
retold at different stages of the poem, ^gisthos had 
been left in " horse-pasturing Argos," by the king, as 
his viceroy, during the war. As years rolled on the 
treacherous cousin succeeded in gaining the guilty love 
of Klytsemnestra, wife to Agamemnon, and the pair 
seized upon the kingdom as their own. Fearing the 
wrath of the injured chieftain, they conspired to mur- 
der him upon his return. Of this tragedy we have two 
accounts — the epic and the dramatic. According to 
Homer, ^gisthos, when notified of Agamemnon's ar- 
rival with but a handful of his troop, w^ent forth to 
welcome him, and to invite him to his mansion. There 
he fell upon him at a banquet, and slaughtered him 
and all his companions, including the royal captive, 
Kassandra. The fullest Odyssean version is to be 
found in the Eleventh Book, wherein Odysseus relates 
to Alkinoos the story of his wanderings subsequent 
to the war. He recounts his visit to the ghostly land 
of the Kimmerii, and the incantations which brought to 
him the souls of the dead. 

This passage I translate from the text of Dindorf 
(somewhat hastily, but w^th due regard to literalness), 
into that English measure of six feet, which, although 
very different from the classical and quantitative hex- 
ameter, is thought by Matthew Arnold to be the one 
which most nearly imitates the unceasing rapid cur- 
rent of the Homeric song, and in which we can best 
preserve the stress of minor words and particles, and 

[233] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

render by an equal number of English lines the verse 
of the original : 

THE DEATH OF AGAMEMNON 

[Odyssey, XL, 385-456.] 

Afterward, soon as the chaste Persephone hither and 
thither 

Now had scattered afar the slender shades of the women, 

Came the sorrowing ghost of Agamemnon Atreides ; 

Round whom thronged, besides, the souls of the others 
who also 

Died, and met their fate, with him in the house of ^gis- 
thos. 

He, then, after he drank of the dark blood, instantly 
knew me, — 

Ay, and he wailed aloud, and plenteous tears was shed- 
ding. 

Toward me reaching hands and eagerly longing to touch 
me; 

But he was shorn of strength, nor longer came at his bid- 
ding 

That great force which once abode in his pliant men- 
bers. 

Seeing him thus, I wept, and my heart was laden with 

pity, 

And, uplifting my voice, in winged words I addressed 
him: 
" King of men, Agamemnon, thou glorious son of 
Atreus, 

Say, in what wise did the doom of prostrate death over- 
come thee? 

Was it within thy ships thou wast subdued by Poseidon 

Rousing the dreadful blast of winds too hard to be mas- 
tered. 

Or on the firm-set land did banded foemen destroy thee 

[234] 



TREASURE TOMBS AT MYKEN^ 

Cutting their oxen off, and their flocks so fair, or, it may 
be, 

While in a town's defense, or in that of women, con- 
tending? " 
Thus I spake, and he, replying, said to me straight- 
way : 

'' Nobly-born and wise Odysseus, son of Laertes, 

Neither within my ships was I subdued by Poseidon 

Rousing the dreadful blast of winds too hard to be mas- 
tered. 

Nor on the firm-set land did banded foemen destroy 
me, — 

Nay, but death and my doom were well contrived by 
^gisthos, 

Who, with my cursed wife, at his own house bidding me 
welcome. 

Fed me, and slew me, as one might slay an ox at the 
manger ! 

So, by a death most wretched, I died; and all my com- 
panions 

Round me were slain off-hand, like white-toothed swine 
that are slaughtered 

Thus, when some lordly man, abounding in power and 
riches, 

Orders a wedding-feast, or a frolic, or mighty carousal. 

Thou indeed hast witnessed the slaughter of numberless 
heroes 

Massacred, one by one, in the battle's heat; but with 
pity 

All thy heart had been full, if thou hadst seen what I tell 
thee, — 

How in the hall we lay among the wine-jars, and under 

Tables laden with food; and how the pavement, on all 
sides 

Swam with blood! And I heard the dolorous cry of 
Kassandra, 

[235] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

Priam's daughter, whom treacherous Klytsemnestra 

anear me 
Slew; and upon the ground I fell in my death-throes, 

vainly 
Reaching out hands to my sword, while the shameless 

woman departed, i 

Nor did she even stay to press her hands on my eyelids, i 
No, nor to close my mouth, although I was passing to 

Hades. i 
Oh, there is naught more dire, more insolent than a 

woman 

After the very thought of deeds like these has possessed j 

her, _ I 

One who would dare to devise an act so utterly shame- | 

less, \ 

Lying in wait to slay her wedded lord. I bethought me, ' 

Verily, home to my children and servants giving me ' 

welcome 

Safe to return ; but she has wrought for herself confusion , 

Plotting these grievous woes, and for other women here- j 

after, : 

Even for those, in sooth, whose thoughts are set upon ! 

goodness." \ 

Thus he spake, and I, in turn replying, addressed him : \ 

" Heavens ! how from the first has Zeus the thunderer \ 

hated, ; 

All for the women's wiles, the brood of Atreus ! What \ 

numbers I 

Perished in quest of Helen, — and Klytsemnestra, the \ 

meanwhile, i 
Wrought in her soul this guile for thee afar on thy jour- 
ney." : 
Thus I spake, and he, replying, said to me straightway : j 
" See that thou art not, then, like me too mild to thy j 

helpmeet ; j 

Nor to her ear reveal each secret matter thou knowest, \ 



[236] 



I 



TREASURE TOMBS AT MYKEN^ 

Tell her the part, forsooth, and see that the rest shall be 
hidden. 

Natheless, not unto thee will come such murder, Odys- 
seus, 

Dealt by a wife ; for wise indeed, and true in her pur- 
pose. 

Noble Penelope is, the child of Icarius. Truly, 

She it was whom we left, a fair young bride, when we 
started 

Of¥ for the wars ; and then an infant lay at her bosom, 

One who now, methinks, in the list of men must be 
seated, — 

Blest indeed ! ah, yes, for his well-loved father, returning. 

Him shall behold, and the son shall clasp the sire, as is 
fitting. 

Not unto me to feast my eyes with the sight of my off- 
spring 

Granted the wife of my bosom, but first of life she bereft 
me. 

Therefore I say, moreover, and charge thee well to re- 
member, 

Unto thine own dear land steer thou thy vessel in secret. 

Not in the light; since faith can be placed in woman no 
longer." 



Thus ends the Homeric version of Agamemnon's 
taking off, and, like everything in Homer, it is the 
more impressive for its directness and pathetic sim- 
plicity. Granting that the bard, nearly twenty-eight 
hundred years ago, was recounting events that oc- 
curred two centuries earlier, the dreadful tale would 
then have been comparatively fresh tradition and en- 
titled to the force of history. 

Four hundred years afterward, ^schylos made the 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

Attic drama a thing of power and life, affecting the 
entire range of Greek Hterature and the sentiment of 
his people and the State. By this time the simplicity 
of Homer's history, — or of the Homeric legends, if 
you choose, — had been superseded. Upon Herbert 
Spencer's theory of progress a great advance was made 
— the change from epic plainness to the complexity of 
the drama, and especially to the abstract impersona- 
tions and psychological grandeur of the choric my- 
thology. A still more refined and complex group of 
ideas came in with Sophokles and Euripides. Whether 
owing to the lapse of time or to the imagination of 
these sublime tragedians, the tales of Homer became 
intermingled with a variety of heroic lore, glossed over 
with a new dramatic interest and thoroughly infused 
with a philosophy that was but dimly perceived by the 
father of epic song. Among the ideas powerfully 
worked out by ^schylos, and heightening the gloom 
and glory of his dramas, were those of Tendency gov- 
erning the history of a person, family, or race; of 
Nemesis waiting upon crime; of Remorse, and Ex- 
piation ; finally, of a Destiny to which the Gods them- 
selves must bow. To utilize these, and make them ef- 
fective elements, he and his compeers took liberties 
with the record and legends of their country; liberties 
greater than Shakespeare has taken with the chronicles 
of Lear, Hamlet, or Macbeth. 

The murder of Agamemnon, it is already seen, in- 
volved the great accessories of the highest drama, and 
necessarily became the leading tragic theme in Greek 
literature. It was the royalest chieftain of his age 

[238] 



TREASURE TOMBS AT MYKENM 

upon whom was wrought this murder, " most foul, 
strange, and unnatural." In Homer, ambition, guilty- 
love, and jealousy, are the combined motives of the 
deed. But, to satisfy the wider scope of the dramatists, 
new forces had to be introduced. The sun is not ex- 
tinguished by a convulsion that might blot out a star. 
Nothing but the hand of Destiny, and the implacable 
Erinnyes, can destroy an Agamemnon. Hence, yEs- 
chylos compelled the tragedy of the Atreidae to date 
back from the unnatural crime of Atreus himself, who 
proffered his brother Thyestes the flesh of that broth- 
er's son, and who was slain by Thyestes in atonement. 
The Gods were not forgetful, although permitting 
Agamemnon to rule in splendor over Argos, and Mene- 
laos to rule over Sparta. Menelaos loses Helena, and 
the King of Men, at the height of his renown, is mur- 
dered by his spouse and her paramour. Here ^s- 
chylos also adds, as a human element, the indignation 
of Klytsemnestra at the death of her daughter, Iphi- 
geneia, decoyed by the King to Aulis under pretense 
of her marriage to Achilles, and there sacrificed to 
appease the goddess Artemis. To the king's death suc- 
ceeds the punishment of the traitorous lovers, who die 
by the hand of Orestes. The parricide, in turn, is 
pursued by the Furies, who are appeased only through 
the intervention of Athena and the Athenians. 
Finally, the woes and w^anderings of Elektra, the sister 
of Orestes, supply another theme, by turns forceful 
and tender, to the three tragedians and their differing 
dramatic modes. 

If, among the seven plays of ^schylos remaining 

[239] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

to us, there are one or two valuable for little more 
than their illustration of the birth of the Attic drama, 
we are compensated by the preservation, not only of 
the sublime Prometheus Desmotes, but of the three, 
intense in human interest, the Agamemnon, Choe- 
phoroi, and Eiimenides, which make the Oresteian 
Trilogy complete. It is the one, the priceless trilogy 
which has come down from its author and its age. 
In Agamemnon the King is slain by the direful hand 
of Klytasmnestra herself, who then and there became 
the typical murderess of all aftertime. The Homeric 
story is discarded, and the wife kills her lord as he 
emerges from the bath, entangling him first in a gar- 
ment as a fish in a net. Leading up to the climax of 
the tragedy we have a dialogue, outside the palace, 
between the captive Kassandra and the old men of 
Argos who compose the chorus. In translation I have, 
with few exceptions, followed Paley's text : 



[Msch., A gam. 1266-13 18.] 

CHORUS — KASSANDRA — AGAMEMNON 

Chor. — O wretched woman indeed, and O most wise. 
Much hast thou said ; but if thou knowest well 
Thy doom, why, like a heifer, by the Gods 
Led to the altar, tread so brave of soul? 

Kass. — There's no escape, O friends, the time is full. 

Chor. — Natheless, the last to enter gains in time. 

Kass. — The day has come ; little I make by flight. 

Chor. — Thou art bold indeed, and of a daring spirit ! 

Kass. — Such sayings from the happy none hath heard. 

Chor. — Grandly to die is still a grace to mortals. 

[240] 



TREASURE TOMBS AT MYKENM 

Kass. — Alas, my Sire, — thee and thy noble brood! 
{She starts back from the entrance.) 

Chor. — How now ? What horror turns thee back again ? 

Kass. — Faugh ! faugh ! 

Chor. — Why such a cry? There's something chills thy 
soul! 

Kass. — The halls breathe murder — ay, they drip with 
blood. 

Chor. — How ? 'Tis the smell of victims at the hearth. 

Kass. — Nay, but the exhalation of the tomb! 

Chor. — No Syrian dainty, this, of which thou speakest. 

Kass. (at the portal) — Yet will I in the palace wail my 
own 
And Agamemnon's fate ! Enough of life ! 
Alas, O friends ! 

Yet not for naught I quail, not as a bird 
Snared in the bush : bear witness, though I die, 
A woman's slaughter shall requite my own, 
And, for this man ill-yoked a man shall fall ! 
Thus prays of you a stranger, at death's door. 

Chor. — Lost one, I rue with thee thy foretold doom! 

Kass. — Once more I fain would utter words, once more, — 
'Tis my own threne ! And I invoke the Sun, 
By his last beam, that my detested foes 
May pay no less to them who shall avenge me. 
Than I who die an unresisting slave ! 

(She enters the palace.) 
Chor. — Of Fortune was never yet enow 
Tc mortal man ; and no one ever 
Her presence from his house would sever 
And point, and say, " Come no more nigh ! " 
Unto our King granted the Gods on high 

That Priam's towers should bow, 
And homeward, crowned of Heaven, hath he come ; 
But now if, for the ancestral blood that lay 
[241] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

At his doors, he falls, — and the dead, that cursed his 
home, 

He, dying, must in full requite, — 
What manner of man is one that would not pray- 
To be born with a good attendant Sprite? 
{An outcry within the palace,) 
Agamemnon. — Woe's me! I am stricken a deadly blow 

within ! 
Chor. — Hark ! Who is't cries " a blow " ? Who meets 

his death? 
Agam. — Woe's me ! again ! a second time I am stricken ! 
Chor. — The deed, methinks, from the King's cry, is done. 
Quick, let us see what help may be in counsel ! 

Whereupon the old men, one by one, make some 
terror-stricken and absurd remarks, which only serve 
to fill out the time until the royal murderess can enter 
upon the scene. The poet evidently conceives her as 
a stately and defiant woman, despising the clamor of 
the throng, while she stands full height in the palace 
door, still holding the bloody weapon in her hands : 

{Agam. 1343-1377.] 

Enter Klyt^mnestra, from the Palace, 

Klyt. — Now, all this formal outcry having vent, 
I shall not blush to speak the opposite. 
How should one, plotting evil things for foes. 
Encompass seeming friends with such a bane 
Of toils? it were a height too great to leap! 
Not without full prevision came, though late, 
To me this crisis of an ancient feud. 
And here, the deed being done, I stand — even where 
I smote him ! nor deny that thus I did it ; 
[242] 



TREASURE TOMBS AT MYKENM 

So that he could not flee nor ward off doom. 
A seamless net, as round a fish, I cast 
About him, yea, a deadly wealth of robe ; 
Then smote him twice; and with a double cry 
He loosed his limbs; and to him fallen I gave 
Yet a third thrust, a grace to Hades, lord 
Of the underworld and guardian of the dead. 
So, falling, out he gasps his soul, and out 
He spurts a sudden jet of blood, that smites 
Me with a sable rain of gory dew, — 
Me, then no less exulting than the field 
In the sky's gift, while bursts the pregnant ear ! 
Things being thus, old men of Argos, joy, 
If joy ye can; — I glory in the deed! 
And if 'twere seemly ever yet to pour 
Libation to the dead, 'twere most so now ; 
Most meet that one, who poured for his own home 
A cup of ills, returning, thus should drain it ! 

Chor. — Shame on thy tongue ! how bold of mouth thou art 
That vauntest such a speech above thy husband ! 

Klyt. — Ye try me as a woman loose of soul ; 
But I with dauntless heart avow to you 
Well knowing — and whether ye choose to praise or 

blame 
I care not — this is Agamemnon; yea, 
My husband ; yea, a corpse, of this right hand. 
This craftsman sure, the handiwork! Thus stands it. 

The third thrust, given by the Queen, to make the 
murder sure, or, as she puts it, " as a votive offering 
to Hades," is an act in strong contrast to the timorous 
course pursued by the Klytsemnestra of Homer — who 
has not wholly unsexed herself, but flees in terror 
from the corpse-strewn banquet hall, ^schylos drew 
the prototype of Lady Macbeth, and nothing equal to 

[243] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

the foregoing speech appeared again in Hterature until 
Shakespeare wrote: 

' Infirm of purpose ! 
Give me the daggers : the sleeping and the dead 
Are but as pictures : 'tis the eye of childhood 
That fears a painted devil. * * * * 
My hands are of your color ; but I shame 
To wear a heart so white ! 

I will omit the greater portion of the choruses and 
dialogue which follow the Queen's avowal, but trans- 
late a few of the strophes and antistrophes alluding 
to the evil auspices of the Atreidae and to the sacrifice 
of Iphigeneia : 

[Agam. 1466- 1507.] 

CHORUS — SEMI-CHORUS — KLYT^MNESTRA 

Chorus. Woe ! Woe ! 

King! O how shall I weep for thy dying? 

What shall my fond heart say anew ? 
Thou in the web of the spider art lying, 
Breathing out life by a death she shall rue ! 
Semi-Chorus. — Alas ! alas for this slavish couch ! By a 
sword 
Two-edged, by a hand untrue. 
Thou art smitten, even to death, my lord ! 
Klyi. — Thou sayest this deed was mine alone ; 
But I bid thee call me not 
The wife of Agamemnon's bed; 
'Twas the ancient fell Alastor ^ of Atreus' throne, 

^ The Evil Genius, the Avenger. 
[244] 



TREASURE TOMBS AT MYKENM 

The lord of a horrid feast, this crime begot, 
Taking a shape that seemed the wife of the dead, — 

His sure revenge, I wot, 
A victim ripe hath claimed for the young that bled. 
Semi-Chonis. — Who shall bear witness now, — 

Who of this murder, now, thee guiltless hold ? j 

How sayest thou ? How ? 
Yet the fell Alastor may have holpen, I trow : 
Still is dark Ares driven 
Down currents manifold 
Of kindred blood, wherever judgment is given, I 

And he comes to avenge the children slain of old. 

And their thick gore cries to Heaven ! | 

Chorus. Woe! Woe! j 

King! O how shall I weep for thy dying? I 

What shall my fond heart say anew? i 

Thou in the web of the spider art lying, , 

Breathing out life by a death she shall rue! j 

Semi-Chorus. — Alas! alas for this slavish couch! By a ; 

sword I 

Two-edged, by a hand untrue, ; 

Thou art smitten, even to death, my lord! i 

Klyt. — Hath he not subtle Ate brought ! 

Himself, to his kingly halls? 

'Twas on our own dear offspring, — yea, : 

On Iphigeneia, wept for still, he wrought 

The doom that cried for the doom by which he falls. j 

O, let him not in Hades boast, I say, j 

For 'tis the sword that calls, \ 

Even for that foul deed, his soul away ! | 

I 
A volume might still be v^^ritten upon the strength ; 

and beauty of the Agamemnon of ^schylos. But for j 

the purpose of this sketch no supplement is needed to I 

[245] • 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

the masterly criticism of Schlegel and Miiller, or to 
the verdict of poets and men of letters from the earliest 
time. Kassandra having shared, as she had predicted, 
the fate of her master, the doors are opened, and 
Klytsemnestra and ^gisthos, with loving words to 
each other and defiance to the populace, retain posses- 
sion of the kingdom. In the remaining portions of 
the Trilogy, one woe doth tread upon another's heel. 
The Choephoroi recounts the vengeance of Orestes, 
who finds his sister offering libations at their father's 
tomb, disguises himself, and finally slays his mother 
and her paramour. In the Eumenides, haunted by 
the ghost of Klytsemnestra, and lashed by the Furies, 
he goes to Delphi and Athens for trial and expiation. 
These dramas are second in importance only to the 
Agamemnon, and afford vivid illustrations of the 
poet's affection for Athens, and of the greatness of 
that city in his own time as the centre of culture and 
power. 

Only one of Sophokles' plays is devoted to the 
theme before us. With his special refinement, and 
tenderness for woman, he made Elektra its heroine, 
and analyzed her feelings and experience. This drama, 
like the Choephoroi, narrates the punishment of 
the Queen by Orestes; but here the accepted legends 
were changed again to suit the genius of the poet. 
As for Euripides, it is not strange that, after the 
theme had been already used by his great masters, 
he should have made a failure with his own Elektra. 
In Orestes he was more successful, as far as tragic 
power is concerned, but the piece is involved and bur- 

[246] 



TREASURE TOMBS AT MY KEN M 

dened with extraneous incident. In Iphigeneia in 
Aiilis and Iphigeneia in Tauris he discovered a field 
and heroine of his own, and, especially in the 
former play, earns his right to be called '' Euripides, 
the Human," and justifies the lines of Browning : 

Euripides 
Last the old hand on the old phorminx flung, 

Then music sighed itself away; one moan 
Iphigeneia made by AuHs' strand; 
With her and music died Euripides. 

Without looking beyond the epic and dramatic poets, 
it is seen that the story of the woes of the House 
of Atreus assumes the foremost position as a theme 
for the daring efforts of the great masters of antique 
song. It also has been more deeply wrought into the 
heart and structure of general literature than any other 
tale of olden time. It has been cited and utilized by 
sages, historians, romancers, throughout the centuries 
even to the present day. The killing of Agamemnon 
became the ideal murder of imaginative literature, the 
standard from which all others take their measure; 
more truly so than that of Abel by Cain, because it 
involves a larger association of human motives, re- 
venges, expiations. It has been treated in a hundred 
modes, from the primitive and serious chronicle of 
Homer to the charade enacted by Colonel and Mrs. 
Rawdon Crawley (the latter " quite killing in the 
part ") before the noble guests of my lord, the Marquis 
of Steyne. 

[247] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

What historical bearing, then, has the news thus 
far received from Dr. SchHemann upon the tradition 
whose Hterary significance we have been examining? 
In the least hopeful view — should no unmistakable 
symbols, or other record, come to light — the discov- 
eries already made, taken in connection with the re- 
sults attained in the Troad, will greatly strengthen 
our faith in the historic value of enduring song. In 
those who have always thought of Agamemnon as a 
hero of pure fiction, it will breed a disposition to con- 
sider him a veritable personage, who ruled and died 
in Argos, and the catastrophe of whose death was 
somewhat as stated in the Odyssey. 

Little in classic story goes behind the fall of Troy. 
Agamemnon and Helena are of the celestial breed. 
Another generation and you come to the demigods ; one 
more, and to the Gods themselves. All this is precisely 
on a level with the tradition of other peoples, as they 
have reached the Homeric plane of enlightenment. The 
same in Assyria, the same in Phoenicia, in Egypt, in 
Peru and Mexico of the Western World. Less than 
four centuries ago an Homeric civilization was found 
and overwhelmed by Cortez and Pizarro. Allow for 
the inferior quality of the darker races, scarcely capa- 
ble, if time had been given, of a much higher develop- 
ment, and how closely analogous the civilization of the 
Aztecs to that of the Homeric chiefs ! Colossal archi- 
tecture, wealth of silver and gold and the products 
of the loom, superstition, priests and soothsayers, royal 
demigods, altars for human sacrifices, the latter more 
frequent and more sanguinary in the New World than 

[248] 



TREASURE TOMBS AT MYKENM 

in the Old. All this blotted out in a recent period, and 
yet before Science had arisen to properly analyze and 
perpetuate its record. And now the whole round 
world is known to us; and now, the round world over, 
the Trojan ages are forever past. 



[249] 



XX 

SIDNEY LANIER ^ 

CERTAINLY all who care for whatsoever things 
are pure, lovely, and of good report, must be 
deeply concerned in the record and ending of Lanier's 
earthly pilgrimage; concerned no less, if ever they 
chanced to meet him, in the mingled softness and 
strength of his nature, the loyalty with which he sang 
his song, pursued his researches, and took the failures 
and successes of his consecrated life. For, if there 
ever was a pilgrim who bore a vow, or a life consecrate 
to an ideal, such a votary was this poet-artist, and so 
manifestly ordered was his too-brief life. 

You will speak to one another of his brave spirit, of 
the illness and trials that handicapped him, and of the 
cheerful industry with which he went through daily 
tasks, and yet so often escaped to the region of poetry 
and art. That he had the graceful and practical talent 
that can adapt itself to use, and give pleasure to the 
simplest minds, was proved by his admirable books for 
the young, and the professional labors fresh in your 
recollection. But in the mould of Lanier, as in that 
of every real poet, the imaginative qualities and the 

^ A letter to President Gilman, of Johns Hopkins University, 
read at the Memorial Gathering to Sidney Lanier. The Critic, 
November s, 1881. 

[250] 



SIDNEY LANIER 

sense of beauty governed and gave tone to all other 
senses and motive powers. He was first of all a poet 
and artist, and of a refined and novel order. 

No man, in fact, displayed more clearly the poetic 
and artistic temperaments in their extreme conjunction. 
It may be said that they impeded, rather than hastened, 
his power of adequate expression. He strove to create 
a new language for their utterance, and a method of 
his own. To reach the effects toward which his subtle 
instincts guided him, he required a prolonged lifetime 
of experiment and discovery; and to him how short 
a life was given — and that how full of impediment! 
He had scarcely sounded the key-note of his overture 
when the bow fell from his hand; and beyond all this 
he meant to compose, not an air or a tune, but a 
symphony — one involving all harmonic resources, and 
combinations before unknown. 

I find that I am involuntarily using the diction of 
music to express the purpose of his verse, and this 
fact alone has a bearing upon what he did, and what 
he did not do, as an American poet. What seemed 
affectation in him was his veritable nature, which dif- 
fered from, and went beyond, or outside, that of other 
men. He gave us now and then some lyric, wandering 
or regular, that was marked by sufficient beauty, pa- 
thos, weirdness, to show what he might have accom- 
plished, had he been content to sing, spontaneously — 
as very great poets have sung — without analyzing his 
processes till the song was done. But Lanier was a 
musician, and still heard in his soul " the music of 
wondrous melodies." He had, too, the constructive 

[2SI] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

mind of the artist who comprehends the laws of form 
and tone. How logical was his exposition of the 
mathematics of beauty is seen in that unique work, 
The Science of English Verse. 

Now it is a question whether, Art being so long, 
and Time so fleeting, a poet should consider too anx- 
iously the rationale of his song. Again, he strove to 
demonstrate in his verse the absolute co-relations of 
music and poetry — and seemed at times to forget that 
rhythm is but one component of poetry, albeit one most 
essential. While music is one of the poet's servitors, 
and must ever be compelled to his use, there still re- 
mains that boundary of Lessing's between the liberties 
of the two arts, though herein less sharply defined than 
between those of poetry and painting. The rhythm 
alone of Lanier's verse often had a meaning to himself 
that others found it hard to understand. Of this he 
was conscious. In a letter to me, he said that one 
reason for his writing The Science of English Verse 
was, that he had some poems which he hoped 
soon to print, but which " he could not hope to get 
understood, generally, without educating their audi- 
ence." To this he added that the task was " inexpressi- 
bly irksome " to him, and that he " never could have 
found courage to endure it save for the fact that in 
all directions the poetic art was suffering from the 
shameful circumstance that criticism was without a 
scientific basis for even the most elementary of its 
judgments." 

If, in dwelling upon the science of his art, he ham- 
pered the exercise of it, he was none the less a man 

[252] 



SIDNEY LANIER 

of imagination, of ideality; none the less, at first sight, 
in bearing, features, conversation, a poet and lover of 
the beautiful. His name is added to the names of those 
whose haunting strain 

Ends incomplete, while through the starry night, 
The ear still waits for what it did not tell. 

Yet the sense of incompleteness and of regret for his 
broken life is tempered by the remembrance that the 
most suggestive careers of poets have not always been 
those which were fully rounded, but often of those 
whose voices reach us from early stages of the march 
which it was not given them long to continue. 



[253] 



XXI 

JULIA WARD HOWE^ 

T% /f RS. HOWE long since won from the popular 
-■-"-■' heart a tribute, rendered to her ardent human 
sympathies, her inborn love of freedom, and her 
patriotism, sustained and unfaltering through the na- 
tion's darkest hour. The critics also have delighted 
to honor one who looks in her heart and writes; and 
whose writings, though woman-like utterances of inner 
life and thought, have little subjectivity of a morbid 
or sentimental kind. 

A poet of such achievements and intent has passed 
beyond the period of gentle appreciation and tender, 
nursing regard. She has earned the right to fair 
and independent criticism. We may now estimate 
her merits and defects. If she has left undone those 
things which she ought to have done, they who tell 
her so will, perhaps, inspire her with motives for new 
and better methods in her chosen work. 

It is thought that in music, literature, the arts of 
painting and sculpture, as well as in all mechanical 
processes, women, with their swift, natural facility, 
arrive at a certain excellence much more rapidly than 
men, but that beyond this point they often lack the 

' The Round Table, February 3, 1866. 
[254] 



JULIA WARD HOWE 

patience or faculty to proceed; while their brothers 
always feel some inward sense impelling them to 
greater mastery of their professions. The foremost 
men are those who include woman's intuition with 
their own strengthening purpose; the noblest women 
acquire a masculine conscientiousness of treatment in 
whatever work they undertake. Has Mrs. Howe thus 
enhanced her womanly endowments? Between her 
Passion Flowers, published in 1854, and these 
Later Lyrics, we fail to discover much artistic ad- 
vance or gain in intellectual clearness. The former 
volume was noticeable for great merits and great 
faults; but the faults are equally conspicuous, if not 
exaggerated, in the collection under review. 

What is Mrs. Howe's standard of excellence? Let 
us repeat it from her own lips. The first among her 
Poems of Study and Experience reveals it plainly, 
and is, we observe, one of the most incisive and 
finished pieces in the volume: 

TO THE CRITIC 

Of all my verses, say that one is good, 

So shalt thou give more praise than Hope might claim ; 

And from my poet-grave, to vex thy soul. 

No ghost shall rise, whose deeds demand a name. 

A thousand loves, and only one shall stand 
To show us what its counterfeits should be; 
The blossoms of a spring-tide, and but one 
Bears the world's fruit — the seed of History. 

A thousand rhymes shall pass, and only one 
Show, crystal-shod, the Muse's twinkling feet ; 

[255] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

A thousand pearls the haughty Ethiop spurned 
Ere one could make her luxury complete. 

In goodliest palaces, some meanest room 
The owner's smallness shields contentedly. 
Nay, further; of the manifold we are, 
But one pin's point shall pass eternity. 

Exalt, then, to the greatness of the throne 
One only of these beggarlings of mine; 
I with the rest will dwell in modest bounds : 
The chosen one shall glorify the line. 

If the singer will stand by her pledge, we may sleep 
sound of nights, with no spectral visitations. Not 
one, but many, are her verses which we pronounce to 
be good, enjoy as such, and are thankful for. Of 
Poems of the War, those entitled " Our Orders," 
" Left Behind," " The Battle Eucharist," are raptur- 
ous expressions of the abnegation, the exaltation, and 
the deep religious faith which carried our people 
through the recent contest. *' The Battle Hymn of 
the Republic," with its profound Hebraic spirit, and 
wrathful, exultant swell, seems, verily, to have borne 
"the world's fruit — the seed of history." The first 
of the " Parables " is a simple and tender rendering of 
the text, " Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the 
least of these, ye did it not to me." The series of 
love poems entitled " Her Verses " are sensuous, if 
not simple, and have truer passion in them than can 
be found in other lyrics depending upon interjectional 
outbursts for their effect. But in some of the Poems 
of Study and Experience, Mrs. Howe seems to be 

[256] 



JULIA WARD HOWE 

raised, by higher thought, to higher art, and more 
nearly achieves success. " Philosophy and First 
Causes," and '' The Christ " will repay any one's read- 
ing. ^' The Church " is in harmony with the free and 
catholic spirit of its author. Our attention is next 
caught by a little madrigal, called " The Evening 
Ride," which we quote as having musical quality, and 
being, therefore, one of the few pieces that can justly 
come under the title of this book: 

Through purple clouds with golden crests 

I go to find my lover; 

Hid from my sight this many a year. 

My heart must him discover : 

I know the lair of the timid hare, 

The nest of the startled plover. 

earth ! of all thy garlands, keep 
The fairest for our meeting; 
Could we ask music, 'twere to drown 
The heart's tumultuous beating. 
That only eyes, in glad surprise. 
Might look through tears their greeting. 

If Time have writ my beauty out, 

1 have no charm to bind him; 

No snare to catch his doubting soul. 
Nor vow exchanged to bind him ; 
But this I keep, that I must weep 
Bitterly when I find him. 

The reader will also admire '' Simple Tales," " Fame 
and Friendship," ''Meditation," "The House of 
Rest," and other thoughtful poems. " The Unwel- 

[257] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

come Message " is very striking, having much of the 
solemn quality which so impresses one in the " Up- 
Hill " of Christina Rossetti; but the latter artist 
would never have ruined her effect by toning up the 
closing stanza with commonplace light. To us, how- 
ever, it seems that the most emotional and sweetest 
passages of the book are to be found in the poems 
on an infant's life and death — '' The Babe's Lesson," 
" Spring Blossoms," " Remembrance," and especially 
the verses entitled " Little One." Whoever reads the 
latter will see what Mrs. Howe can do when feeling 
carries away the obscure vapors which often becloud 
her art. 

Having thus exempted ourselves from reproach, un- 
der the rule made in " Lines to the Critic," we now 
proceed, lawyer-like — ^but in no pettifogging spirit — 
to take exception to the sentiment which those lines 
avow. 

We hold that only a poor and unworthy purpose is 
content to throw off verse after verse, in the hope that 
one out of many will have poetic value. As well 
might a sculptor make rude, distorted figures, con- 
tent with now and then conforming an image to the 
beauty of nature and finishing it to the fingers' ends. 
Is not a poem as truly a work of art as a statue or a 
painting, and are not all arts one in completeness? 
The safe, the noble rule is never to write a bad poem. 
We do not hold that this standard can be maintained ; 
yet, in our day, several have come very near it. There 
are living poets (and poets who will live), each of 
whose pieces has such merit that we know not how 

[258] 



JULIA WARD HOWE 

to spare anything they have produced. If they have 
made poor verses, it has been in silence, and the manu- 
scripts have been ignominiously crumpled, like Beau 
Brummell's " failures " in cravats. Why print any- 
thing that can be omitted — that is not a positive addi- 
tion to literature? Of course, we all do this con- 
tinually, but to do it avowedly, to do it " on principle " 
— that is, indeed, malice aforethought! Now, of the 
hundred and odd lyrics in Mrs. Howe's book there are 
fifty — we do not say devoid of poetry, but whose omis- 
sion would benefit the author's reputation; and of the 
remainder, how few there are which are conscien- 
tiously finished, and, therefore, up to the requirements 
of the time ! 

The time, w^e say, has requirements equally binding 
with those of hope and patriotism. Loyalty to coun- 
try and one's race will not alone suffice; there is a 
loyalty to art, our sovereign mistress, our early and 
eternal desire. In the age of chivalry there were 
Courts of Love, where coquettes and unfaithful 
suitors were indicted; and we do now cite this author 
into the High Court of Art, and, in gentle terms, im- 
peach her of certain malfeasance. She shall be her 
own judge on the evidence adduced, and, if conviction 
ensue, will, perchance, hold herself in bonds for the 
m.ore faithful performance of her high mission. 

A feature of Mrs. Howie's verses, as of Mrs. Brown- 
ing's, is their earnestness; but this becomes too often 
a coarse defect. It is revealed in spasmodic utter- 
ance, or in words big and painful with a meaning 
that will not out, and ejaculations of the Gerald- 

[2501 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

Massey order — is rhetorical, eloquent, gushing, any- 
thing but lyrical and poetic. Mrs. Browning's im- 
pulses led her continually on the same path; but 
noble imagination lifted her lightly above the wild- 
wood thicket in which she went astray, and her sacred 
fire seemed to consume the brambles clinging to her 
skirts. Mrs. Howe's genius is not sufficient to re- 
deem her teacher's faults, and the latter she has 
copied to excess. She seems to write before her idea 
is thoroughly defined to herself. The result is a con- 
fused imagery, and language strangely involved. Her 
obscurity is not that of thought too elevated for ex- 
pression in words, for clear thoughts find the highest 
and purest utterance. It is rather the outward symbol 
of imperfect inner sight, and leads her into bewilder- 
ing inversions, ignoble conceits, inelegant and even 
ungrammatical forms. We cite a few instances of 
what we mean : 

Lost on the turbid current of the street. 

My pearl doth swim; 
Oh, for the diver's cunning hands and feet 

To come to him! 

And only the sun's warm fire 
Stirs softly their happy breast. 

Ye harmless household drudges. 

Your draggled daily wear. 
And horny palms of labor, 

A softer heart may bear: 

Death's cold purity condense 
Vaporous sin to soul's intense. 
[260] 



JULIA WARD HOWE 

Life ye tear to shred and flitter, 
Joying in the costly gHtter 
To rehearse each art-abortion 
That consumes a widow's portion. 

The skies have left one marble drop 
Within the lily's heart. 

Here is a stanza that can only find its counterpart 
in Sternhold and Hopkins's version of the Psalms : 

The murderer's wicked lust 

Their righteous steps withstood: 
The zeal that thieves and pirates knew 

Brought down the guiltless blood. 

Mrs. Howe invariably says Jesu for Jesus; and 
her prayer is always an Ave. Among her crippled 
and unscholarly devices of expression are such words 
and phrases as " sweat-embossed," " sense-magic," 
" weird-encircled," " inmould," " poor occurrence," 
*' recondite dinners," '* man's idle irk," ^' love's eterne," 
" solvent skies," *' in wondrous sequency involved," 
" life's great impersonate," *' prince's minivere," and 
so forth, since these are taken at random from a bar- 
baric host. She tells us of one who '' passions w^ith 
her glance," and elsewhere bids " dawn's sentinels " to 
" shed golden balsam." Who else could have written 
such a stanza as this? 

Deep Night, within thy gloomy catafalque 

Bury my grief; 
And, while thy candles light my funeral walk, 

Promise relief. 

[261] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

The faulty rhyme in this stanza is the least of its 
offences, but suggests others which have kept us in a 
stumbling and apprehensive condition throughout our 
reading of these lyrics : 

" Rule— full," " shady— ready," " daily— railway," 
" God — bowed," " host — lost," " attracts-us — backs-us," 
" fingers — singers," " rudeness — voidness," " joy — by," 
" coin — shine," '' kindred — hundred," " teeth — death," 
" grieve — shrive," etc. 

Mrs. Howe wisely clings to quatrains in which only 
the second and fourth lines are paired, and if she 
would follow Mr. Walt Whitman's ingenious system, 
casting rhyme (no less than metre) beneath her feet, 
she would at least show it more consideration than 
in couplets with such endings as these. This may be 
technical criticism, but is not on a minor matter. 
The great poets know better than to do these things. 
A vile rhyme breaks in upon the full-flowing river 
of written song as rudely as a flat note upon the aria 
of a prima donna. It is, like dropping the ring at 
a wedding, a shock and an evil omen. But Mrs. 
Howe's carelessness in this regard is merely a part 
of the system by which she utters equally disjointed 
thought. There can be nothing more odd than the 
constant juxtaposition of vigorous and feeble verses 
in her poems. The third and fourth stanzas addressed 
" To the Critic " furnish an example. More fre- 
quently, however, she will commence a lyric with a 
really fine verse, and let the reader down so woefully 

[262] 



JULIA WARD HOWE 

before the close that he begins to ask himself whether 
anti-climax is not her favorite figure of speech. 

If these shortcomings arise from constitutional dis- 
ability — from natural lack of power to express — they 
present serious arguments against a verdict that Mrs. 
Howe is a poet. She may be full of poetic feeling, 
appreciative and reflective, may possess the undoubted 
poetical temperament; but poetical power consists in 
the faculty of utterance , and the poet is not only a seer, 
but a '' maker " — a revealer of what he sees. If they 
come from impatience of revision, or too great devo- 
tion to that social life in which Mrs. Howe cannot 
fail to be an honor and a charm, they may and will 
be amended, if she will be conscientious and true to 
her art-career. If they are due to the ready praises of 
undiscriminating friends, we would rather not rank 
among the number of those who thus take away from 
a gifted aspirant more than they can possibly bestow. 
What we have thought is written in a sincere and, we 
trust, not ungenerous spirit. And if Mrs. Howe will 
study more closely those masters of English song 
whose manner is furthest removed from that which 
has hitherto most guided her; if she will add to the 
fire and humanity of her lyrics the harmonies of order, 
the grace of completeness, and the strength of repose, 
our voice shall be among the foremost to claim for 
her the Sapphic crown. 



[263] 



XXII 

EMMA LAZARUS " 

TT ^HILE thoroughly feminine, and a mistress of 
^^ the social art and charm, she was — though 
without the slighest trace of pedantry — the natural 
companion of scholars and thinkers. Her emotional 
nature kept pace with her intellect; as she grew in 
learning and mental power, she became still more 
earnest, devoted, impassioned. 

These advances marked her writings — especially 
her poetry, which changed in later years from its early 
reflection of the Grecian ideals and took on a lyrical 
and veritably Hebraic fire and imagination. You 
have rightly said of her that ' she wrote only when 
inspired ' ; and there was a contagious inspiration in 
her Semitic ardor, her satire, wrath and exaltation. 
That she was able to impart these qualities to sus- 
tained creative work is shown by her strangely power- 
ful drama * The Dance to Death,' unique in American 
poetry. Viewed merely on the literary side, her abil- 
ities were so progressive, under the quickening force 
of a lofty motive, that her early death is a deplorable 
loss in a time when so much verse, if not as sounding 
brass, seems to come from tinkling cymbals. 

^ A letter read at the exercises in commemoration of the 
life and work of Emma Lazarus, 1905. 

[264] 



EMMA LAZARUS 

During the last few years, owing to her change 
of residence, I met Miss Lazarus less frequently, and 
I scarcely knew what inference to derive from your 
feeling biographical sketch, as to her religious attitude 
and convictions. That she was aglow with the Jewish 
spirit, proud of her race's history and characteristics, 
and consecrated to its freedom from oppression 
throughout the world, — all this is finely manifest; yet 
her intellectual outlook was so broad that I took her 
to be a modern Theist in religion, and one who would 
not stipulate for absolute maintenance of the barriers 
with which the Mosaic law isolated the Jewish race, 
in certain respects, from the rest of mankind. Tak- 
ing into account, however, the forces of birth and 
training, I could understand how our Miriam of to- 
day, filled with the passion of her cause, should return 
to the Pentateuchal faith — to the Mosaic ritual in 
its hereditary and most uncompromising form. Nor 
would any lover of the heroic in life or literature, if 
such had been her course, desire to have it otherwise. 



Eighteen years have passed since I wrote the fore- 
going characterization, under the grave sense of loss 
inspired by the pity of her death at the very bloom 
of her creative genius and her new aspiration. 

I saw Miss Lazarus most frequently between 1879 
and 1 881, when our homes were not far apart and 
she was often an admired guest in my household. 
One evening she confided to me her feeling of de- 

[265] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

spondency as to her poetic work; a belief that, with 
all her passion for beauty and justice, she " had 
accomplished nothing to stir, nothing to awaken, to 
teach or to suggest, nothing that the world could not 
equally well do without." These very words I take 
from a letter received from her in the same week, and 
they are the substance of what she had spoken. Al- 
though no American poet of her years had displayed 
from childhood a more genuine gift than hers, I knew 
exactly what she meant. She had followed art for 
art's sake, along classic lines, and had added no dis- 
tinctive element to English song. It suddenly oc- 
curred to me to ask her why she had been so indiffer- 
ent to a vantage-ground which she, a Jewess of the 
purest stock, held above any other writer. Persecu- 
tions of her race were then beginning in Europe. She 
said that, although proud of her blood and lineage, 
the Hebrew ideals did not appeal to her; but I replied 
that I envied her the inspiration she might derive 
from them. 

It was not long before outrages to which the Jews 
were subjected in Eastern and middle Europe began 
to stir the civilized world, and the heart and spirit of 
Emma Lazarus thrilled, as I from the first had be- 
lieved they would, with the passion and indignation 
that supplied the motive needed for her song. When 
we were electrified by those glowing lyrics, '* The 
Crowing of the Red Cock," and '' The Banner of 
the Jew," I felt that she at last had come to her own. 
When she died, a princess was fallen in Israel. Would 
that her hand were here to smite the harp, in this 

[266] 



EMMA LAZARUS 

hour of her race's supreme and last ordeal in the 
Old World, and equally to sound the note of. jubila- 
tion and prophecy as you celebrate, even now, the 
settlement of your historic people upon a continent 
where no tyranny checks their freedom and progress. 



[2671 



XXIII 

KIPLING'S BALLADS OF " THE 
SEVEN SEAS " ^ 

'T^HE dedication of Mr. Kipling's new collection of 
■*• ballads is a significant poem, " To the City of 
Bombay," his birthplace. 

Between the palms and the sea. 
Where the world-end steamers wait. 

This, like the prelude to his earlier book of verse, 
avows a recognition of the forces that have had most 
to do with his work. He finds it well that his birth 
fell not in "waste headlands of the earth"; but the 
world sees also that no more fortunate chance could 
befall an Englishman of his generation, and of a 
genius that would be manifest in any environment, 
than to be born in a distant and imperial British 
dependency; to be bred to realize what has made his 
nation so great; and thus, of all English writers, best 
to know the hearts of " such as fought and sailed and 
ruled and loved and made our world." 

This good fortune, if through it he has lost some- 
thing of the idyllic charm and sweetness, has saved 
^ The Book Buyer, November, 1896. 
[268] 



KIPLING'S BALLADS OF ''THE SEVEN SEAS'' 

him from the over-refinement which glosses the ex- 
quisite measures in which England's home-keeping 
poets give us chiefly variations of thoughts and themes 
essentially the same. The faultless verse of the clos- 
ing period surely needed a corrective. The breath of 
Kipling's fresh and virile song swept across it like 
a channel sea- wind driving the spindrift over hedge 
and garden-close. Both its spirit and its method have 
taken the English-reading world, and they maintain 
their hold in this new collection, entitled The Seven 
Seas. 

Few authors comprehend so well their natural bent 
as Mr. Kipling, or have the sense to follow it so 
bravely. At this stage, and as a poet, he is a balladist 
through and through, though one likely enough to be 
eminent in any effort which he may seriously under- 
take. The balladist's gift is distinctive. A single 
lyric of Drayton's, the thousandth part of his work, 
has made his name heroic. Browning's " Herve 
Riel " and Tennyson's " The Revenge " and ^' Luck- 
now " show that their authors returned to the ballad, 
and not to something less, at the very height of their 
fame. We feel that, as a balladist alone, the preacher- 
poet of the " Last Buccaneer " and '' Lorraine " was 
near of kin to his greater compeers, and if Thornbury's 
stars had not destined him to be a hack-writer, the 
Songs of the Cavaliers and Roundheads would not 
now be out of print through the obscurity of his name. 
But the splendor of " The English Flag " and *' The 
Ballad of East. and West," and the originality and 
weird power of " Danny Deever," find in the present 

[269] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

volume and its predecessor a score of counterparts al- 
most as striking, and find their foil, it must be added, 
in pieces quite below Kipling's level and really harm- 
ful to his fame. As he may fairly consider himself 
still near the outset of his career, one may hope that 
the latter class will in time be banished from collective 
editions of his poetry, and that no literary ghoul of 
the future will venture to restore them. 

Genius is said to be proved by its lapses, but even 
genius, since Tennyson, has been usually *' successful " 
in technique. Kipling, however, with his fine reliance 
upon the first intention, never emasculates his verse; 
on the other hand, either through a lack of self- 
restraint, or working too often for a tempting wage, 
he achieves more failures than are needed to dis- 
tinguish his gift from talent by the negative test. 
These are not wanting in the new barrack-room bal- 
lads. What is best in them is scarcely new, and what 
is new is not indispensable. " Back to the Army 
Again," " Soldier and Sailor Too," and perhaps a 
third or fourth, may well go with the '' Tommy " 
and " Fuzzy- Wuzzy " of old, but one can spare a 
dozen others which seem but " runnin' emptyings " 
of the Atkins beer. It needs the British private at 
his best to make us tolerate the '' Gawd " and 
*' bloomin' " lingo that only heroism and our poet's 
magic can ennoble. Not a little of Kipling's balladry 
is also in a sense too esoteric. The life of this most 
primitive and spontaneous form of poetry is simplicity. 
True, there is one simplicity for the elect, and another 
for the multitude, but there must be something in a 

[270] 



KIPLING'S BALLADS OF ''THE SEVEN SEAS'' 

strong work that appeals to all. The realism of a 
lyric, moreover, be it cockney slang or other detail, 
must interest the future no less than the present, the 
ultimate test being endurance. These reflections would 
not be worth while in the case of a lesser man. Mr. 
Kipling now can afford to be silent for long intervals, 
rather than to give out a single stanza that is not in 
his happier vein. 

But while dainty rhymesters hoard and pare, the 
public will never contemn so resourceful and generous 
a lyrical spendthrift. When we turn to the larger 
portion of The Seven Seas, how imaginative it is, 
how impassioned, how superbly rhythmic and sonor- 
ous ! Kipling now betakes himself to the main which 
English keels have ploughed for ages, and, like them, 
makes it his own from the tropics to the pole. " A 
Song of the English," with its ballads and interludes, 
is the cantata of a master. " The Rhyme of the 
Three Sealers " is grimly intrepid — his ruthless Yan- 
kee skippers are transformed to Vikings in the arctic 
fog. "The Mary Gloster " and " McAndrew's 
Hymn " are, each in its way, thoroughly realistic — ^the 
latter monologue being as true a comprehension of 
the ingrained Scottish temper as can be drawn — 
stronger, in fact, than most of Browning's dramatic 
monologues when he left the middle ages for a con- 
temporary study of that kind. " The Song of the 
Banjo," with its masterly refrains, is resonant of 
pathos, humor, and the world-around music of va- 
grants that, when all is said, are the world's pioneers. 
And of these ballads the most remarkable is that 

[271] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

rollicking unique, '' The Last Chantey/' doubtless one 
of the purest examples, since Coleridge's wondrous 
" Rime," of the imaginatively grotesque. That it is 
a grotesque may exile it from the highest field of art, 
but, like Dore's masterpiece, Le Juif Errant, it is 
a paragon of its kind. It is true to the mental cos- 
mology of the sailor class, and to the author's own 
fancy (as seen in " Tomlinson " and the Prelude to 
the earlier Ballads) by its retention of the mediaeval 
notion of God, the Devil, and supramundane goings-on 
— as. much so as the overture of Faust. The meas- 
ure is roysteringly delightful. Who but Kipling would 
take up the catch of " All round my hat I vears a 
green villow," and use it for a ballad which, if fan- 
tastic, is of magnificent grade? Such an expedient, 
that few would detect, shows that his methods are as 
bold as his imaginings, and that no good workman 
need be at a loss for tools. 

The ring and diction of all this verse add new ele- 
ments to our song. Kipling's realism proves again 
that the strongest flights are taken from the ground 
of truth — ^that ideality and experience are not antag- 
onistic. More than other modern poets of England, 
he has had the liberty of her realm; for him sea and 
shore, ice and desert-sand, are Britain's domain, or 
that of those who speak her tongue. Of such, the 
soldier and sailor, the explorer, of every degree, are 
his people, and the traders large and small. To re- 
veal their sensations is easy for the insight that cre- 
ated a demonic soul within the Ganges " Mugger " 
and is on human terms with all the beasts of the jungle. 

[272] 



KIPLING'S BALLADS OF ''THE SEVEN SEAS'' 

Kipling's national mode of thought found expres- 
sion in the proud outburst, " What should they know 
of England who only England know ! " He is now 
more than ever the celebrant of the empire, and of 
the deeds of men that extend it: 

If blood be the price of Admiralty, 
Lord God we ha' paid it in! 

He is thus, in some degree, the true laureate of 
Greater Britain. Others may sing the praise of a 
home administration, but his song is scornful of form 
and rule that irk or fail to comprehend the English 
spirit in its courses round the globe. Of all Vic- 
torian poets Tennyson was the most indubitably an 
Englishman, from a focal and outlooking point of 
view; and among those that survive, Kipling expresses 
the imperial inspiration, from every far-off station 
which he knows so well, looking toward the central 
isles. It is impossible that America, boding the un- 
written federation of English-speaking peoples, should 
not be on closer terms with Mr. Kipling than with 
other transatlantic singers, by virtue of whatever share 
we still possess in the greatness of our ancient mother- 
land. 



[273] 



XXIV 
WENDELL'S "COTTON MATHER"^ 

T?OR the sub-title of this book, "The Puritan 
-■- Priest," doubtless many readers would think 
" The Puritan Prelate " might be substituted, — so well 
established have become our traditions of the most 
renowned of the Mathers : traditions perhaps strength- 
ened, since the appearance of Tyler's American 
Literature, by its author's vivid alignment of the 
Mather Dynasty. But this new and faithful exam- 
ination of a stormy, self-torturing career makes it 
evident that priest and not prelate is the fit appella- 
tive. Dr. Cotton Mather, though in temper the most 
autocratic of his race, held no undisputed sway. His 
proud and armored spirit, humbling itself to none save 
Jehovah, — self -elected to be His familiar, even as 
Abraham and Moses had been of old, — found barriers 
that pent it in, and against which it beat in vain. It 
was freest and most potent in his early prime, while 
his father Increase was also at the height of influence. 
Apparently from the day when, in the flush of youth 
and denunciatory zeal, he strode his horse and 
harangued an awe-stricken throng at the hanging of 
George Burroughs on Salem hill, both his secular 
* The Critic, January 2, 1892, 
[274] 



WENDELL'S "COTTON MATHER" 

authority and his power to maintain the stern Hebraic 
law and ritual in the Old Colony grew less and less. 
To the end of his life he found himself more or less a 
suspect, criticised, hampered, gainsayed, by the laity 
and his sacerdotal peers; slowly but surely, to his 
grief and bewilderment, getting farther away from his 
inherited rights as the chief exponent of the ancestral 
creed and New England's spiritual potentate. 

He found himself, while keenly alive to his pre- 
rogatives as the flower of theocratic generations, lack- 
ing real advancement; forced, after all, to take refuge 
in his learning, subtlety, mysticism, and in what Pro- 
fessor Wendell analyzes as the " histrionic insincerity 
of priesthood that brings to unhappy men the Divine 
sympathy of priests." One soon discovers that Mr. 
Wendell is a master of paradoxy: it is his natural 
method of getting at a radical truth. In using it 
for honest needs, rather than for effect, he is original 
and gives his style a decidedly specific flavor. 

Dr. Mather, then, even in that colonial period, was 
an anachronism. He incurred the obloquy of many 
who advanced beyond his creed, and in whom his 
vanity and egregious manner bred a hearty antago- 
nism. And he died after experience of foiled ambi- 
tions, grievously baffled, it is clear, in never securing 
the Presidency of Harvard — which his father held for 
sixteen years. He saw that college dangerously lib- 
eralized, and was driven to strengthen Yale as the cita- 
del of the true faith, where a glorious defence could 
still be made — the outposts having been sapped if not 
taken. Yale College — how would the Doctor esti- 

[275] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

mate her now?^ — can never forget that to Cotton 
Mather's influence she owed a helpful endowment and 
a name. Meanwhile, after every rebuff and humilia- 
tion, and in the domestic tragedies that shrouded his 
later years, he went to his closet like the men of old, 
and wrestled with his Puritan God. He invariably 
restored his wounded self-respect by comforting en- 
tries in the diaries begun in youth and assiduously 
kept up — despite the labor of writing some hundreds 
of other volumes — throughout his life. To an ac- 
quaintance with his pangs and ecstasies we are skil- 
fully led by the present biographer. We enter into 
his secret thoughts; we know him, his people, his time, 
as not even he or they could have known themselves. 
The projectors of the Makers of America Series 
hardly could have placed him in better hands than 
those of the accomplished Assistant Professor of Eng- 
lish at Harvard. Mr. Wendell brings to his task, his 
first of the kind, an exact method habitual from 
university work, and the instinct of a New Englander 
steeped in the culture and traditions of the Mother 
of American learning. He has had recourse to the 
diaries and other MSS., largely unpublished, held by 
Historical and Antiquarian Societies, and to those in 
private keeping. It is greatly to be regretted that 
the outcome is restricted to the narrow limits of a 
volume in the present *' series." What we obtain 
makes it probable that, if given fuller scope, the 
author would have produced a very notable biography. 
As it is, Dr. Mather was not without wisdom in his 
careful prevision for the illumination of after-cen- 

[276] 



WENDELL'S "COTTON MATHER" 

turies, that the annals and reHcs of so forceful a being 
might not perish from among men. 

With respect to Mather's share in the witchcraft 
tragedies of 1692, and his homicidal belief in the 
activity of Satan and his fiends throughout New Eng- 
land at that time, — as set forth in the '' Magnalia " 
and " Perentator " and the diaries, — Professor Wen- 
dell has ideas which he presents briefly but with 
much effect. These are not at all inconsonant with 
the note of our closing century, or with the chances 
of the next century's demonstrations. They are cer- 
tainly suggestive now that we are already familiar 
with " More Wonders of the Invisible World," which 
even Robert Calef, for all his cool-headed traverse of 
Matherian credulity, would not be able to gainsay. 
Our biographer not only accredits Mather with abso- 
lute honesty of conviction, but thinks there may have 
been scientific ground for the confused statements and 
charges of the " afflicted," young and old, in Salem. 
In the light of ancient and modern instances, and of 
our psychical research, he is not prepared to deny 
that there were at that time, and may now be, sensi- 
tives who do '' hear a voice " and '' see a hand " be- 
yond ordinary hearing or seeing. He would look 
upon these as less developed natures, retaining the 
senses of archaic progenitors — senses akin to those of 
brute creatures whose quality of sight and hearing 
is certainly different from, if not finer than, our own. 
The latter-day psychologist and evolutionist more 
readily will believe that mankind is to acquire the 
future power of taking in what is now imperceptible 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

to us; that we are ever approaching the spiritual sen- 
sitivity which is '' all touch, all eye, all ear." The 
theosophist will aver that certain adepts already have 
reached that goal. But Professor Wendell, if we mis- 
take not, is the first of historical writers to take the 
view that the witchcraft declarations are not to be 
repelled altogether as born of malice or delusion; that 
there may be conditions all about us which are en- 
tirely within nature, yet not discoverable by the normal 
perception of the average man. What he says upon 
this topic is of singular interest and affords new hints 
for discussion. 

On the whole a graphic portraiture, largely from 
his own pencil, is given of the voluminous Mather — a 
Cambridge prodigy in youth, both of piety and learn- 
ing, and of a disposition to exercise those attainments 
for the regulation of less- favored mortals, — a disposi- 
tion which possibly is even yet not without exemplars 
in the places that once knew him. We see him from 
first to last endowed with the Puritan second-sight, 
familiar with apparitional imps and angels, ecstatic 
as Swedenborg or Bohme; of implicit credulity in his 
father's Remarkable Providences, and with an im- 
agination so inflamed thereby that he unwittingly 
became in character, though not in power, a type of 
the egotist, the tyrant and the bigot. With no more 
appreciation of the comic than Sewall exhibits, he 
writes of himself and his surroundings with grotesque 
fidelity. His present chronicler, while rarely dilating 
upon the ludicrous side of his meditations, must have 
chuckled now and then, if not unblessed with humor, 

[278] 



WENDELLS ''COTTON MATHER" 

while leaving that so manifestly to speak for itself. 
But Professor Wendell usually remembers that he 
holds a brief for his subject, and discharges his trust 
becomingly. 

Indeed, the distinctive result of his labor is that he 
has shown Cotton Mather not alone as history thus 
far has shown him : not merely, on the one side, as the 
most loquacious pedant, yet in truth most learned 
scholar, of his time; not merely as the egotist, the 
mystic, the theocrat, the promoter of the Salem trials; 
nor yet merely as the author of that unique, quaintly 
inclusive, survey of his compeers without which none 
can fully comprehend the early and middle colonial 
periods; but he has set before us a man who may in 
justice be absolved from the charge of obstinate bad 
faith and concealed recognition of terrible mistakes. 
He has taken us into Dr. Mather's sanctuary and 
patiently laid bare the chambers of his heart, wherein 
even his unfaltering credulity invests him with some- 
thing like heroism. He has conceived of the Puritan 
priest as sincere to the last, as one who died a good 
man, going to his grave stricken but not cast down. 
It was *' a good man," he enables the reader also to 
believe, '* whom they buried on Copp's Hill one Feb- 
ruary day in the year 1728," just as he had rounded 
the sixty-fifth year of a defiantly militant pilgrimage. 



[279] 



XXV 

JULIET'S RUNAWAY, ONCE MORE^ 

^nr^HE ignorance that knows itself, quoth the Sei- 
■^ gneur de Montaigne, is not an absolute igno- 
rance, and this is my one excuse for the presumption 
of adding even a votive pebble to the cairn which 
marching hosts of commentators have heaped above 
the embalmed dust of Shakespeare. For I long since 
knew that I never was and never could be his textual 
scholar, in the smallest degree illustrated during the 
evolution from Rowe and Warburton to Furness. 
Grateful to those who faithfully have labored to set 
forth the true version, I am of the laity who read it 
without question, for its wisdom, passion, imagination, 
and inexhaustible delight. 

Meanwhile I take pride in our New World scholar- 
ship, and will say, in passing, that when Mr. Gosse 
wrote me that we did many fine things, but that we 
perforce must leave English literary research to those 
anear the rich materials treasured in the motherland, I 
had a fortunate rejoinder. It was a satisfaction to 
declare that the two most notable works of textual 
verification now issuing were from the American 
press, and edited by American scholars. I cited Pro- 

^ Poet-Lore, 1892. Richard G. Badger, Publisher. 
[2801 



JULIETS RUNAWAY, ONCE MORE 

fessor Child's English and Scottish Popular Bal- 
lads and Dr. H. H. Furness's New Variorum Edi- 
tion of Shakespeare; and Mr. Gosse — a fair and sound 
expositor — handsomely doffed his cap to the citation. 
It happened that my first youthful notion of what 
Shakespearian criticism meant, in its subtile pains- 
taking, was derived from an article in Putnam's 
Monthly by one who bravely started out as " Shake- 
speare's Scholar " — the early signature of R. G. 
White. His long paper was devoted to a considera- 
tion of its title : " Who was Juliet's Runaway ? " That 
conundrum, I believe, has haunted every one to whom 
it has been put. Collier forty years ago declared that 
far more suggestions had been made in answer than 
there are letters in the disputed word. I remember 
the sense of awe with which I pondered on Mr. 
White's avowal : " He who discovers the needful word 
for the misprint ' runawayes eyes ' . . . will secure 
the honorable mention of his name as long as the 
English language is read and spoken." What erudite 
humility, I thought, in his faith that " to correct a 
single passage in Shakespeare's text is glory enough 
for one man ! " At that time he held a brief for the 
suggestion as to which he afterwards learned, when 
a riper " scholar," that Heath and Singer had antici- 
pated him, — all three reading " That Rumour es eyes 
may wincke," instead of " That run-aways eyes," etc. : 
— in truth, a plausible conjecture. But in 1861 Mr. 
White had gone back to the belief of Warburton that 
the word as it stands is correct, and not a misprint; 
that it relates to Phoebus, the Sun, the god of day. 

[281] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

Dr. Furness, by occupying the most conspicuous 
part of his Appendix (to Romeo and Juliet) with 
a formidable synopsis of the guesses concerning our 
runaway, shows that a certain respect is still due it, 
as perchance the yet-to-be-solved riddle of that Sphinx 
the earliest misprinter. 

So, then, *' can anything new be said " concerning 
Juliet's runaway: at least, anything new and with a 
savor of plausibility? As for the newness, and pre- 
suming that Dr. Furness's collation embraces the past 
suggestions worth regard, it seems improbable that my 
own has been made before. Its claim to likelihood 
may appeal somewhat to those who have the poetic 
ear, and who have that sense which is heightened 
by practice of style in verse or prose. 

Turn, then, to " Marlowe's mighty line," — to The 
Tragical History of Doctor Faustiis, a play written 
after his success with Tamhurlaine, probably about 
1588. Bear in mind that Shakespeare's first draft 
of Romeo and Juliet was written, it is believed, 
about 1 59 1, and that there is no evidence that it 
appeared in its entirety in the printed text of 1597 — 
which contains only a few lines of Juliet's soliloquy 
as put forth in the subsequent collections. Certainly 
it was composed at a period characterized, Verplanck 
says, by " the transition of Shakespeare's mind from a 
purely poetical to a dramatic cast of thought." There 
is evidence to any critic that Marlowe was Shake- 
speare's early dramatic " master," as far as the greater 
genius may be said to have had one for the rhythm of 
his formative period, and swiftly as he forged ahead. 

[282] 



JULIETS RUNAWAY, ONCE MORE 

The two collaborated, and the younger borrowed some 
of Marlowe's phrases for his after-plays, and bur- 
lesqued others. Romeo and Juliet was sketched 
out in his spring-time of echoes and impressibility 
with respect to feeling and style. 

The experience of many a writer has been that in 
youth — however original his conceptions may be — he 
will more readily fall into the cadences and syntax of 
the predecessor whom he knows by heart, than com- 
mit any plagiarism with or without intent. The 
strongest, the most subtle, proofs of influence lie in 
imitation of caesura, rhythm, structure, tone. To all 
this I once alluded more fully, in comparison of Tenny- 
son with the Syracusan idyllists. 

Turn, as I say, to the last scene of Faitsttis, and 
to the frantic soliloquy of the magician, who realizes 
that he has " but one bare hour to live " and then 
'' must be damned perpetually." Consider his opening 
adjuration : 

Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,^ 

That time may cease, and midnight never come ; 
Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make 
Perpetual day ; or let this hour be but 
A year, a month, a week, a natural day. 
That Faustus may repent and save his soul ! 
O lente, lente currite, noctis equil 

Then read from the soliloquy of Juliet, Romeo and 
Juliet, iii. 2 : 

^ The italics in these passages, the Latin verse excepted, are 
of course my own. 

[283] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

Gallop apace, you iiery-footed steeds, 
Towards Phoebus' lodging: such a waggoner 
As Phaethon would whip you to the West, 
And bring in cloudy night immediately. — 
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night, 
That runaway's eyes may wink, and Romeo 
Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen. — 

Now, whether right or wrong in my ensuing con- 
jecture as to " runaway's eyes " (or, as the First 
Folio has it, " run-awayes eyes"), I feel assured, 
through both instinct and analysis, that young Shake- 
speare had the Faustus soliloquy by heart, — ^that its 
every phrase and cadence tingled in his own fibre when 
he wrote the adjuration of our impassioned and free- 
spoken Juliet. For, look you, — over and above the 
rhythm and syntax, the turns of the phrases, the 
explicatory " That " similarly placed in both passages, 
— note that Juliet's demand for haste is merely the 
converse of Faustus's wild cry for postponement, just 
as her whole apostrophe betokens joy and rapturous 
expectation, and his — hopeless gloom, the recoil of 
fierce despair. 

There are natural changes in the order. Translate 
Marlowe's lente, lente currite, noctis equi! — 

O gently, gently foot it, steeds of night! 

and you have the converse of 

Gallop apace, you fiery- footed steeds! 

But to the very point. Marlowe bids Fair Nature's 
eye rise again and make perpetual day: he adjures 

[284] 



JULIETS RUNAWAY, ONCE MORE 

the Sun to banish fell night and its damnations. Hav- 
ing chanced, then, to observe the close reflection in 
Shakespeare's mind of the Faustus prototype — quite 
as close, the instinct feels, as that which connects the 
Garden Tower in New York with the Giralda Tower 
of Seville, and equally no more a plagiarism — observ- 
ing this, it is borne in upon me that he made Juliet 
call upon night to spread her close curtain, 

That Nature's eye may wink, and Romeo 
Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen ; 

that, in other words, the Sun whose steeds she bids 
gallop apace, the sun which Faustus calls *' Fair Na- 
ture's eye," may '' wincke " for the nonce, and let the 
lovers '' doe their amorous rights." 

But if any one insists upon retaining the plural 
" eyes," doubting that successive misprints should 
occur, then I would read 

That Nature's eyes may wink, and Romeo— 

the eyes of Nature at night being indubitably the stars, 
whose " winckeing " or twinkling ^ serves only to 
make darkness romantically visible, and bewrays lovers 
no more than would a mist of tropical fireflies. 
■ Some experience of printing and script-reading 
fortifies me against the most obvious exception to 

* The latter word, etymologically, is simply the " frequenta- 
tive" of the former. 

[285] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

my conjecture. For if, as so many believe, " run- 
awayes " was a misprint, it is quite probable that the 
blindly-written word in the manuscript was no more 
like the printer's substitute than like any one of fifty 
others that would fill the allotted space. With Grant 
White, I am not troubled by the absence of a long 
letter in my word, to correspond with the y in " run- 
awayes." " Rumoures eyes " is not a bad guess. One 
might accept it, but for the cousinship of the two 
soliloquies. I make no account of *' rude day's," 
" runagate's," " enemies'," " unawares," and a dozen 
other far-fetched guesses of prosaic scholiasts. The 
one claim of several is that they begin with R. But 
the slightest bend of the second down-stroke in the 
written N (Elizabethan) transforms it into R; so that 
" nature's " need not be debarred on that score. 

The mutual likeness of the two soliloquies crops 
out here and there throughout them. Its most curious 
vagary is the fantastic, elfish sound-echo, in Juliet's 
speech, of the weak lines in Faustus: 

O soul, be chang'd into little water-drops, 
And fall into the ocean, ne'er be found ! 

This reappears, — the meaning apart, — in 

Give me my Romeo, and when I shall die, 
Take him and cut him out in little starres, etc. 

There is good warrant for our natural faith in 
tradition, in the correct transmission of ancient " in- 

[286] 



JULIETS RUNAWAY, ONCE MORE 

stances " — of saws, proverbs, nursery rhymes, of clas- 
sic phrases whether scriptory or conveyed from mouth 
to mouth. Small thanks to an audacious bookman, 
like Ahrens, imperiously well equipped, who not only 
rewrites whole verses of Theocritus but transposes 
their entire succession in an idyl! Despite the un- 
deniable, even bristling, errors in the First Folio, 
*' runaway's eyes " does not excite my absolute scep- 
ticism; for I would not, like Warburton, White, and 
others, deem Phoebus the runaway, but would rather 
think that Juliet — all woman yet all child — applied 
that pretty appellation to her dainty self. To an 
editor who by chance was a bit of a poet, that notion 
might not seem half so fanciful as many of the con- 
ceits in Shakespeare's deathless apotheosis of youth, 
with all its efflorescence of speech and passion, its 
happy hapless voice and deed. But my acceptance of 
the word which so many censors have disallowed at 
last has been shaken — the argument through analogy 
being so convincing — by a chance comparison of 
Juliet's speech with its model in a play by resonant 
Kit Marlowe. 

It used to be said that every French author owed 
it to himself to write one naughty book. Nowadays 
the maxim is reversed : he writes one virtuous book, 
teste Zola's '' Le Reve/' as a personal and tributary 
rite. Nevertheless, I piously believe it is not wholly 
in the same spirit that these surmises, respecting one 
word of all that Shakespeare left us, are confided to 
the reader. 

[287] 



GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS Cr SB 

[My one bit of Shakespearian comment : I am still 
just as certain of my point, as Dr. Waldstein was of 
the origin of the marble head in the Louvre, which did 
fit shoulders of an Elgin figure in the British mu- 
seum. — E. C. S., 1907.] 



[288] 



